THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


OUTLINE 


Historical  Method 


FRED  MORROW  FLING,  PH.D., 

Professor  cf  European  His  bry  in  the  University 
of  Neb  aska. 


LINCOLN 

J.  H.  MILLKH. 

1899. 

AINSWORTB  &  COMPANY, 

378-383  V/ttasij  A»eaue, 

CHICAGO,  ILL. 


Copyrighted  1899, 

by 
y.  M.  FLING. 


Education 
Library 

ft 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER.  PAGE. 

I.     Introduction 5 

II.     Sources,  Bibliography,  and  Auxiliary  Sci- 
ences         15 

III.  External  Criticism:    Genuineness  of   the 

Source 26 

IV.  External  Criticism:    Localization    of    the 

Source 36 

V.     External  Criticism:    Analysis  of  the  Source 

and  Restoration  of  the  Text 49 

VI.     Internal  Criticism:    Interpretation  of  the 

Source  and  Value  of  the  Source 62 

VII.  Internal  Criticism:    Establishment  of  the 

.  Facts 75 

VIII.  Synthetic    Operations:      Imagining    the 

Facts,   Grouping   the  Facts,   and   Con- 
strued Vf  Reasoning 87 

IX.     Synthetic   Operations:    Environment  and 

the  Philosophy  of  History 100 

X.     Synthetic  Operations:    Exposition 113 


CHAPTER  L 


INTRODUCTION. 

\  T  7E  shall  have  better  history  teaching  when 

Y  V      we  ^ave  better  trained  teachers;  and 

we  shall  have  the  trained  teachers 

when  the  teachers  themselves,  and  those  who 

employ  them,  realize  that  history  can  be  taught 

only  by  those  who  have  been  prepared  for  the 

work. 

As  the  matter  stands  to-day,  it  is  the  popular 
belief  that  any  intelligent  person  may  teach  a 
class  in  history  without  special  training,  or,  with 
no  other  knowledge  than  general  information, 
may  participate  in  a  discussion  upon  methods 
of  teaching  history  and  what  the  object  of  his- 
torical study  is.  It  is  not  an  uncommon  thing 
for  a  college  graduate,  who  has  devoted  all  his 
time  to  Greek  and  Latin,  or  to  science,  to  have 
a  class  in  history  assigned  to  him.  He  may  not 
be  particularly  pleased  with  the  assignment, 
but  it  does  not  strike  him  as  at  all  incongruous. 
While,  on  the  other  hand,  no  good  high  school 
principal  would  assign  a  class  in  Greek  to  a 
man  who  had  not  been  trained  for  that  work. 
What  is  the  reason  for  this  distinction  2  It  is 
not  far  to  seek.  As  history  has  been  taught, 
and  is  still  taught,  in  the  high  school,  no  spe- 
cial training  is  necessary.  Any  bright  man  can 
read  over  the  lesson  and  hear  the  class  recite 
it.  The  large  majority  of  history  teachers 
never  engaged  in  a  bit  of  original  research  and 


6  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

have  no  more  idea  of  what  constitutes  history 
a  science  than  has  the  intelligent  public  outside 
the  school  room. 

This  unscientific  spirit  crops  out  of  all  the 
discussions  in  teachers'  associations  and  of  most 
of  the  articles  in  educational  papers. 

The  reasons  so  commonly  given  to  justify  the 
study  of  history  can  be  traced  to  the  same 
source.  Instead  of  studying  history  for  the 
same  reason  that  we  study  botany  or  chemistry, 
that  is,  for  its  own  sake,  we  must  study  it  for 
the  ethical  training  it  gives,  for  its  power  of 
forming  character,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 
Now,  history  is  not  ethics,  and  it  claims  a  right 
to  an  independent  existence.  It  deals  with  the 
evolution  of  man  in  society,  and  no  further 
reason  need  be  given  to  justify  the  study  of 
history  than  the  necessity  of  knowing  how  that 
evolution  has  taken  place.  If  the  teachers  of 
history  can  be  induced  to  see  how  rational  this 
view  of  their  work  is,  one  long  step  will  have 
been  taken  toward  improving  the  work. 

But  what  is  this  training  that  the  teacher 
must  have,  if  better  work  is  to  be  done  and  if 
history  is  to  take  its  place  by  the  side  of  Latin, 
Greek,  mathematics,  and  the  sciences  as  a  dis- 
ciplinary study?  She  must  learn  what  the 
process  is  by  which  an  historical  narrative  is 
constructed,  and  she  must  go  through  that 
process  herself.  She  can  no  more  become  a 
satisfactory  teacher  of  history  without  this 
training  than  she  could  become  a  successful 
teacher  of  chemistry  without  laboring  with  her 
own  hands  in  the  laboratorv.  It  is  difficult  to 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  7 

make  the  teachers  realize  this,  but  if  the  cru- 
sade for  better  history  teaching  is  to  succeed, 
they  must  realize  it. 

This  subject  of  how  history  is  written,  I  have 
treated  in  a  general  manner  elsewhere;  it  is  my 
intention  to  treat  it  now  more  in  detail.  But 
before  taking  up  the  successive  steps  in  the  con- 
struction of  an  historical  narrative,  I  wish  to 
point  out  the  differences  between  the  historical 
method  and  the  method  employed  in  the  nat- 
ural sciences. 

In  the  natural  sciences,  the  so-called  method 
of  direct  observation  is  made  use  of.  The  ob- 
ject itself  is  studied  directly  either  with  the 
naked  eye  or  with  the  microscope.  Not  one  ob- 
servation but  many  are  made  and  under  the 
most  favorable  circumstances.  The  observa- 
tions thus  made  are  recorded  at  once,  and  in 
exact,  scientific  language,  the  meaning  of  which 
is  not  ambiguous.  But  scientific  truth  is  not 
established  by  the  work  of  one  man.  Other 
scientists  must  make  similar,  observations  and 
obtain  like  results  before  these  results  can  be 
accepted  as  fully  demonstrated.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  recall  the  controversy  over  the 
supposed  discovery  of  a  cure  for  consumption 
by  Dr.  Koch,  of  Berlin,  to  make  clear  how  ex- 
acting the  scientists  are.  and  how  difficult  it  is 
to  establish  a  new  truth  beyond  the  possibility 
of  doubt. 

Is  the  historical  process  similar  to  this?  Not 
at  all.  It  is  quite  different.  History  deals  with 
the  past.  It  may  be  the  past  of  this  morning, 
of  the  war  with  Spain,  or  of  the  Persian  wars 


HISTOBICAL   METHOD. 

of  Greek  history,  but  it  is  always  the  past. 
Yet  it  is  not  with  the  past  in  an  indefinite  way 
that  history  has  to  do.  It  is  with  the  past  in 
which  human  society  has  developed  and  the 
problem  with  which  it  deals  is  this:  How  has 
the  present  complex,  world-society  been  evolved 
from  the  primitive,  disconnected  beginnings  of 
four  or  five  thousand  years  ago  ?  It  is  its  busi- 
ness to  reconstruct  the  process  and  to  describe 
the  successive  steps.  When  it  has  done  that,  it 
has  done  its  whole  duty. 

But  how  does  it  perform  this  duty  ?  What  is 
its  method?  It  cannot  be  the  method  of  direct 
observation,  the  method  of  the  natural  sciences, 
and  the  reason  is  very  plain;  the  objects  are  not 
here  to  be  observed.  The  past  can  be  known 
to  us  only  through  its  records,  technically  called 
the  sources.  These  sources  are  of  two  kinds; 
material  remains  and  traditions.  The  remains 
are  all  of  those  things  that  were  -actually  .part 
and  parcel  of  the  life  of  past  generations;  bodies 
of  men,  clothing,  weapons,  houses,  roads, 
bridges,  newspapers,  letters,  coins,  etc.  This 
.  subdivision  of  the  sources  will  be  better  appre- 
ciated if  a  list  be  made  of  the  material  objects 
that  will  form  the  sources  for  the  history  of  our 
own  society.  One  of  the  characteristics  of 
modern  historical  method  is  the  increase  in  the 
variety  of  the  source  material.  Some  of  our 
most  valuable  information  is  drawn  from  ma- 
terial that  past  generations  never  thought  of 
putting  to  such  a.  use. 

The  other  main  division  of  source  material  is 
tradition.     It  is  of  three  kinds;   oral,  written, 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  9 

and  pictorial.  Pictorial  tradition  has  attained 
a  great  significance  in  our  generation  and  a 
great  value  that  it  did  not  formerly  possess. 
This  change  is  due  to  photography.  For  the 
historian  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  the  great  war 
scenes  by  French  contemporary  artists  are  of 
little  value;  while  for  the  historian  of  our 
war  with  Spain,  the  snap-shots  taken  by  the 
camera  of  a  war  correspondent  will  form  the 
most  valuable  source  material. 

Oral  tradition  is  the  least  reliable  of  all.  It 
is  the  account  of  an  event  that  has  passed  from 
lip  to  lip  and  has  been  handed  down  from  one 
generation  to  another.  It  soon  becomes  utterly 
unreliable  and  worthless,  although  it  may  have 
been  very  valuable  when  it  came  from  the  lips 
of  the  eye  witness. 

The  written  tradition,  upon  which  the  his- 
torian chiefly  relies  for  his  knowledge  of  the 
thoughts  and  acts  of  men  in  the  past,  if  it  be  a 
source,  contains  the  record  of  what  has  been 
seen  or  heard  by  an  eye  or  ear  witness. 

This  is  the  material  with  which  the  historian 
works.  He  observes  it  directly,  it  is  true,  but 
what  he  observes  is  not  the  event,  not  the 
object,  but  the  record  of  an  observation  made 
upon  that  object.  And  \vhat  an  observation  it 
often  is!  Made,  perhaps,  by  an  incompetent  per- 
son, who,  at  the  time,  had  no  intention  of  record- 
ing it,  it  is  onesided  and  incomplete,  and  written 
down  so  long  after  the  event  that  what  little 
value  it  originally  had  has  been  materially  im- 
paired, if  not  wholly  destroyed.  Add  to  this, 
the  fact  that  it  is  expressed  in  unscientific 


10 


HISTORICAL   METHOD. 


language,  and  some  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
problem  will  be  clear.  What  would  be  the 
value  to  the  chemist  of  a  series  of  experiments, 
if, — to  borrow  the  illustration  of  a  French 
writer, — his  knowledge  of  them  were  based 
upon  the  accidental  observations  of  the  janitor 
of  the  laboratory  ?  Not  only,  then,  is  the  his- 
torian of  the  remote  past  unable  to  observe  the 
events  directly,  "but  it  is  very  rare  that  the 
documents  of  which  he  makes  use  contain  ex- 
act observations.  He  cannot,  moreover,  make 
use  of  the  records  of  observations  scientifically 
established,  that,  in  the  other  sciences,  may, 
and  often  do,  take  the  place  of  direct  observa- 
tion." 

His  method  must  be  that  of  indirect  observa- 
tion. He  starts  with  the  record  and  attempts 
to  work  his  way  back  to  the  fact,  to  see  the 
fact  as  the  observer  saw  it.  The  fact  is  the 
goal  of  his  efforts,  not  the  starting  point,  as  in 
the  work  of  the  natural  scientist.  The  docu- 
ments that  form  the  starting  point  for  the  his- 
torian are  nothing  more  "  than  the  traces  of 
psychological  operations."  In  order  to  infer 
from  the  document  the  fact  that  gave  rise  to  it, 
tthe  student  of  history  must  retrace  the  whole 
series  of  psychological  operations  that  lay  be- 
tween the  fact  and  the  written  record  of  the 
observation,  retracing  them  in  the  inverse 
order,  beginning  with  the  document. 

The  object  of  the  procedure  is  to  establish 
the  genuineness  of  the  document  and  the  value 
of  the  observations.  If  the  document  is  not 
genuine,  we  need  not  take  it  into  account;  and 


HISTORICAL    METHOD. 


11 


an  observation  is  practically  useless  until  it  has 
been  localized,  that  is,  until  we  know  when  it 
was  made,  where  it  was  made,  and  by  whom  it 
was  made. 

From  this  crucible  of  criticism,  the  contents 
of  a  document  come  forth  separated  into  single 
affirmations,  each  affirmation  bearing  the  mark 
of  its  value.  This  is  the  foundation  work  that 
places  in  the  hands  of  the  historian  observa- 
tions similar  to  those  possessed  by  the  scien- 
tist, but  seldom,  if  ever,  as  exact  or  as  valuable. 
The  work  of  historical  criticism  is  extremely 
difficult,  but  absolutely  necessary. 

It  is,  however,  the  portion  of  method  to 
which  the  least  attention  is  paid  in  our  colleges, 
although  it  is  the  best  developed  part  of 
method.  The  natural  credulity  of  the  human 
mind  leads  the  student  and  the  historian,  too, 
for  that  matter,  to  accept  with  the  faith  of  a 
child  the  evidence  that  comes  to  them,  and  to 
utilize  observations  without  having  first  localized 
them.  Here  is  where  the  reform  must  begin. 
The  student  must  be  taught  that  "  historical 
work  is  critical  work  par  excellence"  and  that 
he  is  sure  to  fail  if  he  undertakes  it  without 
having  been  previously  put  on  his  guard 
against  his  natural  instinct  to  accept  without 
examination  anonymous  information  and  to 
utilize  good,  bad,  and  indifferent  documents 
without  distinction.  This  work  should  be  done 
in  the  colleges;  it  is  very  seldom  that  it  is 
done  there. 

In  future  papers  I  shall  give  a  more  detailed 


12  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

treatment  of  criticism.  My  purpose  at  this 
time  is  to  bring  out  the  characteristic  feature 
of  historical  method,  namely,  that  of  indirect 
observation  and  to  distinguish  it  from  the  direct 
observation  of  the  natural  sciences. 

As  the  material  with  which  the  historian 
deals  consists  largely  of  "  the  traces  of  psycho- 
logical operations,"  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the 
student  of  history  must  have  at  least  a  working 
knowledge  of  psychology.  Much  good  his- 
tory, it  might  be  said,  was  written  before  such 
a  science  as  psychology  existed.  True,  but  it 
was  written  by  men  who  through  introspection 
knew-  much  about  the  workings  of  their  own 
minds,  and  through  experience  much  about  the 
workings  of  their  fellows'  minds.  They  ap- 
plied this  to  their  work,  sometimes  consciously, 
more  often  unconsciously.  To-day,  in  addition 
to  his  own  introspective  study  and  his  experi- 
ence, the  student  of  history  has  at  his  disposal 
scientific  treatises  upon  the  operations  of  the 
human  mind,  and  is  taught  to  apply  this  knowl- 
edge consciously  in  his  work.  Without  such  a 
training,  he  is  unable  to  trace  the  mental  proc- 
ess by  which  an  observation  Is  made,  and  thus 
determine  its  value;  without  such  a  training, 
he  is  unable  to  control  his  own  mental  opera- 
tions when  he  attempts  to  imagine  the  event 
described  by  the  witness.  The  more  conscious 
these  processes  become,  the  more  likely  are 
they  to  become  exact  and  scientific. 

The  teacher  of  history,  then,  should  be  a 
constant  student  of  herself,  observing" carefully 
every  mental  process  that  has  any  relation  to 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  13 

historical  method;  through  reading  and  travel, 
she  should  enlarge  her  experience,  and,  finally, 
she  should  systematize  her  psychological  knowl- 
edge by  the  careful  study  of  some  good  work 
on  psychology. 

Psychology  is  as  likely  to  throw  as  much 
light  upon  the  problems  of  history  teaching  as 
it  has  already  thrown  upon  those  of  historical 
method.  It  teaches  the  student  of  history  that 
"  the  eye  sees  in  an  object  what  the  eye  brings 
power  of  seeing,"  and  the  student  of  history, 
become  the  teacher  of  history,  knows  that  the 
boys  and  girls  in  her  classes  can  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  past  society  from  the  sources  just 
so  far  as  their  knowledge  of  present  society  has 
given  the  eye  power  to  see,  and  no  further. 
We  know  that  this  mass  of  knowledge  has  been 
acquired  unconsciously  and  to  a  very  large  ex- 
tent has  been  used  unconsciously.  One  of  the 
innovations  of  the  future  in  history  teaching 
will  be  the  care  for  the  S3rstematic  acquisition 
through  direct  observation  of  such  knowledge 
of  existing  society  as  will  enable  the  young 
student  to  understand  the  past.  This  work 
must  be  done  in  the  early  years  and  lay  the 
foundation  for  the  study  of  ancient  society.  It 
has  long  been  a  question  as  to  whether  history 
study  should  begin  with  ancient  history  or  with 
the  history  of  the  locality  in  which  the  child 
lives.  Psychology  would  seem  to  have  an- 
swered this  question  once  for  all.  It  says  the 
child  can  begin  in  but  one  way,  and  that  is  by 
the  direct  observation  of  the  society  in  which  it 
lives.  When  through  this  direct  observation 


14:  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

the  eye  has  acquired  the  "  power  of  seeing," 
the  attention  may  then  be  turned  to  the  societies 
of  the  past  that  may  be  studied  only  indirectly 
and  by  the  light  of  the  knowledge  that  has  been 
acquired.  Some  excellent  suggestions  for  this 
direct  observation  of  society  will  be  found  in 
one  of  the  chapters  of  Professor  Mace's  book 
on  Method.  It  is,  to  my  mind,  the  most  im- 
portant chapter  in  the  book. 

If  this  chapter,  and  those  that  follow, 
accomplish  what  I  hope  they  may  accomplish, 
the  teacher  that  reads  them  and  needs  their 
help  will  not  accept  on  trust  the  statements 
that  I  have  made,  but  will  proceed  to  test  them, 
and  by  so  doing  make  the  truths  they  contain 
her  own  property.  Let  her  satisfy  herself  by 
dealing  with  source  material  (accounts  of  the 
battle  of  Manila  by  eye  witnesses — August 
Century)  that  the  method  of  the  historian 
must  be  that  of  indirect  observation;  let  her 
see,  at  the  same  time,  how  necessary  to  her 
work  a  knowledge  of  psychology  is,  and  if  she 
has  not  already  done  so,  let  her  take  up  the 
study  of  the  subject;  and  last  of  all  let  her 
convince  herself  of  the  need  of  a  systematic 
study  of  existing  society  by  her  young  pupils, 
and  learn  from  the  examination  of  the  life  of 
the  village  or  city  in  which  she  lives  what  fas- 
cinating material  for  direct  observation  lies 
unused  around  her.  Such  effort  will  give  her 
a  new  insight  into  the  nature  of  historical  work, 
and  will  enable  her  to  become  a  valued  helper 
in  the  crusade  for  the  better  teaching  of 
history. 


CHAPTER  II. 


SOURCES,  BIBLIOGRAPHY,   AND  AUXILIARY 
SCIENCES. 

IN  the  preceding  chapter,  I  emphasized  the 
fact  that  to  teach  history  successfully  one 
must  know  how  to  study  history  scientific- 
ally.    It  is  then  with  the  subject  of  Historical 
Method — the  method  of  studying  and  not  the 
method  of  teaching  history — that  this  and  the 
following  chapters  will  have  to  do. 

There  has  always  been  more  or  less  method 
in  the  way  in  which  history  has  been  studied 
and  written,  but  for  a  long  time  this  method 
was  largely  unconscious.  This  is  established 
by  the  fact  that  only  in  our  generation  has  a 
literature  of  any  size,  containing  treatises  upon 
method  of  considerable  length,  come  into  exist- 
ence. But  one  work  has  come  down  to  us  from 
the  Greeks,  Lucian's  "How  Should  History  be 
Written,"  and  this  treatise  deals,  for  the  most 
part,  with  the  artistic  form  of  the  historical 
narrative.  Rome  and  the  Middle  Ages  contrib- 
uted practically  nothing  to  method.  In  fact, 
the  period  of  the  Middle  Ages  represented  a 
reaction  in  historical  writing.  A  new  era  be- 
gan with  the  Renaissance. 

The  awakening  of  interest  in  the  past,  that 
was  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Renais- 
sance, contributed  largely  to  the  development 
of  historical  method.  Men  must  gather  ma- 
terial and  experiment  with  it  for  generations 


16 


HISTORICAL    METHOD. 


before  the  data  for  a  work  on  method  can  be 
gathered.  Now  the  first  modern  treatises  on 
method  were  preceded  by  many  generations  of 
practical  work;  by  the  publication  of  great  col- 
lections of  sources,  with  critical  notes  and  aids 
of  various  kinds.  Then  appeared  the  first  at- 
tempt to  describe  the  method  by  which  the 
work  was  done.  But  before  our  day  the  works 
were  few;  they  appeared  at  long  intervals  and 
were  incomplete  in  their  treatment  of  method. 
Each  work,  however,  contributed  something, 
and  every  time  the  attempt  to  formulate  the 
rules  of  historical  science  was  renewed,  there 
was  a  broader  base  to  build  upon,  as  each  man 
studied  the  work  of  his  predecessors  before  do-: 
ing  his  own. 

Of  the  works  produced  in  the  sixteenth, 
seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries,  there  are 
a  few  that  stand  out  from  among  the  rest: 
those  of  the  Frenchman  Bodin,  * '  Methodus  ad 
facilem  historiarum  cognitionem"  (1566);  of 
the  German  Voss,  "Ars  historica"  (1623);  of 
the  Frenchman  Mabillon,  "De  re  diplomatica" 
(1681);  of  the  Frenchman  Du  Fresnoy,  "Me~- 
thode  pour  6tudier  Fhistoire"  (1713);  of  the 
Italian  Vico,  "Principi  della  scienza  nuova" 
(1725). 

In  our  century,  the  quality  of  work  has 
increased  and  the  quality  improved.  The  Ger- 
mans were  the  leaders,  and  the  most  important 
works  are  those  of  Wachsmuth, ' '  Entwurf  einer 
Theorie  der  Geschichte "  (1820);  of  Droysen 
"Grundriss  der  Historik"  (1867)— published 
in  this  country  in  a  translation  by  Andrews; 


HISTORICAL    MKTHOD.  17 

Gervinus,  "Grundziige  der  Historik"  (18)7); 
Lorenz  "Die  Geschichtswissenschaf  t "  (1886, 
1891);  of  Dolci,  the  Italian,  "  Sintesi  di  scienza 
storica*'  (1887);  and  of  the  Englishman  Free- 
man,. ''The  Methods  of  Historical  Study" 
(1886). 

Up  to  1889,  these  were  the  most  important 
treatises  that  had  appeared  on  method.  They 
dealt  with  the  subject  in  a  summary  way — many 
of  the  works  being  only  pamphlets — and  often 
treated  only  parts  of  method  instead  of  the 
whole.  There  was  need  of  a  work  that  should 
gather  up  these  partial  results,  combine  them, 
and  attempt  to  present  them  in  a  systematic 
and  detailed  manner.  Such  a  work  was  pub- 
lished by  Bernheim  in  1889.  The  title  is  "  Lehr- 
buch  der  historischen  Methode."  It  contains 
six  hundred  pages  and  describes  in  detail  all  the 
steps  in  the  construction  of  an  historical  narra- 
tive. The  book  marks  an  epoch.  For  the  first 
time  a  real  text-book  on  method  had  been  pro- 
duced. In  1897  a  more  popular  work  was  pub- 
lished in  France  by  Langlois  and  Seignobos,  en- 
titled, "Introduction  aux  etudes  historiques." 
Although  the  work  does  not  pretend  to  be  an 
exhaustive  treatise  like  that  of  Bernheim,  yet 
certain  divisions  of  the  subject  are  dealt  with 
in  a  much  more  satisfactory  manner  and  really 
supplement  the  work  of  Bernheim. 

Besides  these  two  hand-books  treating  of  the 
whole  subject,  many  monographs,  or  partial 
studies,  have  been  published,  so  that  the  litera- 
ture upon  method  has  become  one  of  quite  re- 
spectable size,  and  can  not  be  neglected  by  any 
serious  student  of  history. 


HISTORICAL    METHOD. 


But  what  is  the  result  of  all  this  study  by  so 
many  centuries  of  historians? 

A  conscious  operation  in  the  treatment  of 
historical  material,  an  understanding  of  what 
has  already  been  accomplished,  and  a  pretty 
fair  appreciation  of  what  remains  to  be  done. 
As  yet,  the  form  in  which  the  results  are  pre- 
sented has  not  been  fixed  by  tradition;  but  there 
is  a  quite  general  agreement  as  to  the  subject 
matter  and  order  of  arrangement,  although 
there  is  some  disagreement  as  to  the  nomencla- 
ture to  be  employed. 

Bernheim,  after  an  introduction  dealing  with 
such  questions  as  the  definition  of  history,  the 
relation  of  history  to  other  sciences,  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  attaining  scientific  certainty  in  his- 
torical study,  divides  his  work  into  four  par  Is: 

(1)  Quellenkunde,    treating   of   bibliography, 
source  collections,  and  the  auxiliary  sciences; 

(2)  Kritik,  treating  of  the  genuineness  of  the 
sources,  their  origin  and  value,  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  historical  fact,   and  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  facts  established;  (3)  Auffassung, 
dealing  with   the  interpretation  and  grouping 
of  facts,  with  their  physical,  psychical,  and  so- 
cial environment,  and  with  the  philosophy  of 
history;  (4)  Darstellung,  or  the  formulation  of 
the  results  obtained  in  the  preceding  investi- 
gation. 

The  grouping  of  Langlois  and  Seignobos  is 
somewhat  simpler.  Their  work  is  divided  into 
three  parts:  (1)  Les  connaissances  pr&alables, 
or  preliminary  knowledge,  equivalent  to  Bern- 
heim's  Quellenkunde;  (2)  Operations  analyt- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  19 

iques,  embracing  criticism,  interpretation,  and 
establishment  of  the  facts;  (3)  Operations  syn- 
th&tiques,  or  combination  of  the  facts  and  con- 
structive reasoning  together  with  the  presenta- 
tion of  results. 

There  is  one  important  difference  between 
the  arrangement  of  Bernheim  and  that  of  Lang- 
lois  and  Seignobos;  in  the  first,  interpretation 
follows  the  establishment  of  the  fact;  in  the 
last,  it  precedes  it.  With  that  exception, 
there  is  substantial  agreement  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  two  works. 

It  would  be  safe  to  say  then,  that,  whatever 
title  may  be  given  to  the  parts,  a  work  on 
method  naturally  falls  into  three  or  four  parts; 
four,  if  the  narrative,  or  presentation  of  the  re- 
sults, forms  an  independent  division. 

A  moment's  thought  will  show  that  all  this 
is  nothing  more  than  a  careful  description  of 
the  procedure  of  the  student  of  history  from 
the  time  that  he  selects  his  subject  for  investi- 
gation until  he  commits  the  results  of  this  in- 
vestigation to  paper.  It  is  my  intention  in  thia 
chapter  and  the  following  to  sketch  rapidly 
the  successive  steps  in  this  procedure  as  they 
are  described  in  the  works  just  referred  to.  I 
hope  that  it  may  be  helpful  to  teachers  that 
have  not  access  to  these  works  or  who  would  be 
unable  to  read  them.  If  they  would  draw  the 
greatest  benefit  from  this  study,  let  them  fol- 
low the  process  step  by  step,  investigating 
some  historical  topic  in  accordance  with  the 
method  described.  Let  them  repeat  the  proc- 
ess again  and  again,  and  careful  scientific  work 
will  soon  become  second  nature. 


20  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

The  rest  of  this  chapter  will  be  devoted  to 
what  Bernheim  calls  Quellenkunde  and  Langlois 
and  Seignobos,  Connaisance  pr&alables. 

Sources  were  defined  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ter, and  Bernheim's  classification  of  them  under 
remains  and  tradition  was  given.  It  is  clear 
that,  if  there  are  no  sources,  no  history  can  be 
written.  If  a  student  is  desirous  of  investi- 
gating a  subject,  he  asks  himself  the  questions: 
"Are  there  any  sources?  What  are  they? 
Where  are  they  ?  "  If  there  are  no  sources, 
the  subject,  however  interesting,  can  not,  of 
course,  be  investigated.  Great  masses  of 
source  material  are  being  destroyed  in  various 
ways  every  day.  On  a  recent  tour  of  investi- 
gation in  France,  I  learned  in  two  places,  at 
St.  Martin,  on  the  He  de  Re",  and  at  Saintes,  on 
the  neighboring  mainland,  that  valuable 
archives,  containing  sources  for  which  I  vras 
seeking,  had  recently  been  destroyed  by  fire. 
It  is  a  common  thing  in  the  course  of  an  inves- 
tigation to  run  across  traces  of  sources  that 
once  existed  and  perhaps  exist  to-day,  but  can 
not  be  found.  Often  sources  are  known  to  be 
hidden  in  private  archives,  to  which  access  is 
denied. 

But  even  when  the  student  knows  that  sources 
exist  and  where  they  exist,  his  work  is  often 
rendered  difficult  by  the  fact  that  his  sources 
are  scattered  and  a  use  of  them  would  oblige 
him  to  make  long  journeys.  His  work  will  be 
lightened  if  a  government  has  acquired  all  of 
this  material  and  placed  it  in  a  central  depot. 
It  will  be  lightened  even  more  if  this  rnanu- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

script  material  has  been  published  and  he  can 
study  it  comfortably  by  his  own  fireside. 
While  the  study  of  written  tradition  may  thus 
be  made  easy,  there  are  certain  kinds  of  source 
material  that  can  be  studied  only  upon  the  spot. 
An  exact  copy  of  a  manuscript  may  be  studied 
even  more  satisfactorily  than  the  manuscript 
itself,  but  neither  photographs  of  an  historical 
spot,  nor  descriptions  of  it,  nor  both,  will  do 
for  the  student  what  direct  observation  will  do. 
But  whether  he  can  only  study  at  home  or 
can  also  go  abroad,  it  behooves  the  student  of 
history  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  great 
source  collections  that  have  been  published 
by  governments,  associations,  and  individuals. 
The  contemporary  histories  of  Greece  and 
Rome  have  been  carefully  edited  in  the  original 
Greek  or  Latin,  and  also  translated  into  English. 
The  Greek  and  Roman  inscriptions  have  been 
gathered  up  from  every  side,  carefully  restored 
and  published.  Hundreds  of  specialists  are  en- 
gaged in  making  public  the  Latin  sources  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  sources  of  the  later 
periods  composed  in  the  language  of  the  vari- 
ous peoples.  Some  periods  have  been  thor- 
oughly worked,  while  others  are  still  almost 
virgin  soil.  So  difficult  is  much  of  this  work, 
BO  nice  and  varied  the  skill  required  of  the 
worker,  that  many  men  do  nothing  but  this: 
they  simply  prepare  the  sources  that  others 
may  make  use  of  them.  Historical  work  is  be- 
coming every  year  more  differentiated,  and  to 
make  it  successful  the  heartiest  co-operation 
must  exist  among  the  workers. 


22  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

The  source  collections  of  which  I  have  been 
writing  are  made  up  of  complete  documents, 
nar-ratives,  etc.  There  are  other  source  col- 
lections of  a  more  elementary  character,  com- 
posed of  short  typical  documents  and  of 
extracts  from  narrative  sources.  These  are 
for  the  use  of  beginners.  The  new  method  of 
history  work  has  called  into  existence  n  large 
amount  of  this  material.  From  Harvard  Uni- 
versity htive  come  extracts  and  documents  on 
United  States  History;  from  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  "Original  Sources  of  European 
History;"  from  the  University  of  Michigan, 
sources  of  English  History;  from  the  Univer- 
sity of  Indiana,  sources  of  European  History; 
and  from  the  University  of  Nebraska,  sources 
of  European  and  American  History. 

But  suppose  that  there  are  sources  and  that 
they  are  accessible,  how  does  the  student  learn 
what  they  are  and  where  they  are?  It  is  the 
work  of  bibliography  to  tell  him  this. 

After  the  subject  for  investigation  has  been 
selected,  his  first  step  is  to  seek  for  a  book  that 
will  answer  these  two  questions  for  him.  Such 
a  work  is  not  always  to  be  found.  Bibliogra- 
phy is  not  in  an  advanced  stage  of  develop- 
ment. The  larger  number  of  works  upon 
which  the  student  must  depend  are  out  of  date 
and  others  are  thoroughly  unscientific.  In 
many  of  them,  no  distinction  is  made  between 
sources  and  narratives  based  upon  the  sources, 
and,  for  the  most  part,  when  the  sources  are 
enumerated  there  is  nothing  to  indicate  their 
contents  nor  the  value  of  the  contents.  The 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  23 

most  of  this  work  the  advanced  student  is 
obliged  to  do  for  himself.  Historical  study 
will  be  much  easier  when  good  bibliographies 
have  been  prepared. 

Although  he  may  have  learned  what  the 
sources  are  that  he  needs,  the  student  is  often 
in  ignorance  of  the  whereabouts  of  his  sources, 
especially  if  they  consist  of  rare  printed  books 
or  manuscripts.  Here  bibliography  might 
help  him,  but  it  seldom  does.  The  large  and 
wealthy  libraries  ought  to  have  the  books  and 
certain  archives  should  contain  the  manuscripts. 
But  books  and  manuscripts  are  not  always 
where  they  should  be,  and  even  when  they  are 
they  are  very  often  not  catalogued. 

Yet  however  incomplete  these  bibliographi- 
cal aids  are,  they  are  all  we  have  and  are  im- 
proving rapidly  each  day.  The  student  that 
does  not  know  how  to  make  use  of  them  will 
find  himself  badly  handicapped.  A  most  help- 
ful little  book  upon  historical  bibliography 
was  recently  published  in  Paris.  The  author 
is  Langlois  and  the  title  Manuel  de  bibliographic 
historique. 

When  the  student,  through  the  use  of  bibli- 
ography, has  succeeded  in  reaching  the  sources, 
he  finds  that  his  work  can  not  go  on  without 
the  use  of  one  or  more  auxiliary  sciences.  It 
may  be  a  manuscript  that  he  has  before  him, 
and  it  may  be  incumbent  upon  him  to  deter- 
mine its  genuineness  before  using  it.  The  per- 
formance of  such  a  task  would  call  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  palaeography ,  or  the  science  of  writing, 
of  diplomatics,  or  the  science  of  documents,  and 


24  HI   TORICAL  METHOD. 

perhaps  several  others.  If  it  is  known  that 
the  document  is  genuine,  the  student  must  at 
least  have  a  knowledge  of  the  language  in 
which  it  is  written  in  order  to  interpret  it. 
For  some  periods,  such  a  knowledge  is  not  easy 
to  acquire.  The  investigator  in  the  fields  of 
Grecian,  Roman,  or  Mediaeval  History  must 
have  a  knowledge  of  philology ,  or  the  science  of 
language.  He  must  be  acquainted  with  all  the 
changes  that  take  place  in  the  meaning  of  a 
word  in  order  to  understand  how  it  is  used  at  a 
particular  time.  When  the  student  comes  to 
criticise  his  sources,  and  to  determine  their 
value,  he  finds  that  a  knowledge  of  psychol- 
ogy is  necessary;  in  arranging  his  facts,  he 
must  make  use  of  chronology,'  in  combining 
them,  of  logic;  in  forming  the  background,  he 
is  aided  by  geography,  ethnology,  economics, 
and  sociology;  and  in  searching  for  the  deeper 
meanings  of  historical  development,  by  philos- 
ophy. These  are  the  most  important  of  the 
auxiliary  sciences.  There  are,  of  course,  many 
others,  determined  by  the  peculiar  nature  of 
the  subject  investigated. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  historical  inves- 
tigation is  neither  easy  nor  simple.  And  why 
should  it  be?  It  has  to  do  with  the  most  dif- 
ficult and  complex  of  subjects — the  evolution  of 
man  in  society.  We  are  just  coming  to  a  real- 
ization of  the  magnitude  of  the  task  to  be 
accomplished  in  correctly  tracing  this  evolu- 
tion, and  of  the  only  way  in  which  it  may  be 
accomplished.  The  uninitiated  are  accustomed 
to  sneer  at  the  specialist  in  history  who  con- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  25 

fines  himself  to  a  limited  field  and  works  it 
thoroughly.  But  it  is  the  sneer  of  ignorance. 
Such  specialization  in  the  natural  .sciences  is 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course.  We  must  learn 
that  the  same  reasons  make  specialization  im- 
perative in  historical  sciences.  Without  spe- 
cialization, we  can  not  advance. 

Special  study  and  comprehensive  views  of 
history  are  not  irreconcilable  things.  Every 
scientific  investigator  will  not  only  know  first 
hand  the  results  obtained  in  his  own  part  of  the 
field,  but  he  will  know  second  hand  the  results 
obtained  in  other  parts  of  the  field.  Speciali- 
zation can  be  dangerous  only  when  the  special- 
ist fails  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  greater 
whole  of  which  his  work  is  only  a  part. 

If  the  student,  supplied  with  the  necessary 
knowledge  of  the  auxiliary  sciences,  has  been 
able,  through  the  aid  of  bibliography,  to  find 
the  sources  that  he  seeks,  his  next  step  will  be 
to  decide  how  much  of  these  sources  can  be  ad- 
mitted as  evidence  on  the  subject  under  inves- 
tigation. To  settle  that  question  is  the  province 
of  Criticism  or  Kritik. 


CHAPTER  III. 


EXTERNAL   CRITICISM;    GENUINENESS  OF  THE 
SOURCE. 

BERNHEIM'S  KRITIK,  the  second  division 
of  Method,  covers  practically  the  same 
ground  as  Langlois,  and  Seignobos'  Op- 
Orations  analytiques.  The  subdivisions  of  the 
former  are  External  Criticism,  Internal  Criti- 
cism, and  Critical  Arrangement  of  the  Material; 
of  the  latter,  .External  Criticism  and  Internal 
Criticism. 

External  Criticism,  Bernheim  subdivides  into: 
Testing  the  Genuineness,  Localization  of  the 
Source,  and  Editing;  Langlois  and  Seignobos, 
into  Criticism  of  Restoration,  Criticism  of  Ori- 
gin, Critical  Classification  of  the  Sources,  and 
Criticism  of  Erudition  and  the  Erudites. 

The  ground  covered  in  both  works  is  practi- 
cally the  same,  Bernheim  being,  of  course, 
more  technical  and  detailed,  while  Langlois  and 
Seignobos,  in  their  interesting  chapter  on  "La 
critique  d'erudition  et  les  6rudits,"  deal  with  a 
subject  not  treated  by  Bernheim,  or,  rather, 
treat  it  from  a  different  point  of  view. 

In  this  chapter,  I  shall  consider  the  first  sub- 
division of  External  Criticism,  the  Testing  of 
the  Genuineness  of  the  Source. 

The  first  question  that  the  historian  puts  to 
the  sources  that  he  has  brought  together  is 
"  Are  they  genuine  ?  Or,  subdividing  the  ques- 
tion, he  asks,  "Are  they  what  they  appear 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  27 

to  be?"  (forgery),  and  "Are  they  what  I 
think  they  are?"  (self-deception).  In  the  first 
case,  the  trouble  lies  with  the  source;  in  the  sec- 
ond case,  with  the  historian.  A  lack  of  criti- 
cism in  the  first  case  would  lead  us  to  use  material 
that  should  not  be  used;  u  lack  of  criticism  in 
the  second  case,  or  it  may  be  hypercriticism, 
would  cause  us  to  reject  material  that  should 
be  used.  The  historian  should  guard  against 
these  two  errors. 

Man  is  naturally  credulous.  It  is  much  eas- 
ier to  believe  what  we  hear  than  to  sift  the  evi- 
dence in  order  to  find  out  the  truth.  This  last 
process  is  so  unnatural  that  few  men  will  un- 
dertake it  unless  it  is  absolutely  necessary. 
Criticism  is  often  a  thankless  task,  for  its  re- 
sults are  frequently  negative,  forcing  the  his- 
torian to  Jthrow  aside  as  worthless  what  he  has 
gathered  with  so  much  difficulty. 

The  critical  attitude  toward  the  sources  has 
been  a  product  of  time.  Although  it  has 
reached  its  fullest  development  in  our  day,  there 
were  historians  among  the  Greeks  whose  atti- 
tude was  in  some  respects  strikingly  modern. 
Speaking  of  the  credulous  spirit,  Thucydides 
said  (I.,  20):  "For  men  receive  alike  without 
examination  from  each  other  the  reports  of  past 
events,  even  though  they  may  have  happened 
in  their  own  country.  *  *  With  so  little 

pains  is  the  investigation  of  truth  pursued  by 
most  men;  and  they  rather  turn  to  views  al- 
ready formed.'"  Referring  to  his  own  methods 
of  investigation,  he  wrote  (I.,  22):  "  But  with 
regard  to  the  facts  of  what  was  done  in  this 


28  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

war,  I  do  not  presume  to  state  them  on  hearsay 
from  any  chance  informant,  nor  as  I  thought 
probable  myself,  but  those  at  which  I  was  per- 
sonally present,  and,  when  informed  by  others, 
only  after  investigating  them  accurately  in 
every  particular,  as  far  as  was  possible." 

Many  passages  from  the  histories  of  Polyb- 
ius  (L,  14;  XII. ,  17-22)  show  that  his  attitude 
toward  the  sources  was  decidedly  critical. 

But  I  recall  nothing  that  would  indicate  that 
either  of  these  writers  carried  their  skepticism 
so  far  as  to  doubt  the  genuineness  of  the  material 
that  fell  into  their  hands.  They  dealt  more  with 
what  we  call  to-day  Internal  Criticism.  Even 
here  Thucydides  was  not  consistent,  but  at- 
tempted to  make  a  rational  narrative  out  of  the 
myths  of  the  Iliad,  gravely  discussed  the  reasons 
for  Agamemnon's  leadership  in  the  Trojan  War, 
and  knew  the  contents  of  the  sealed  letter  sent 
by  Pausanias  to  the  Persian  king,  Xerxes.  In 
a  word,  the  critical  method  was  not  thoroughly 
conscious  and  scientific. 

The  Greeks  left  us  nothing  in  the  writing  of 
history  but  the  work  of  Lucian,  referred  to  in 
the  preceding  chapter.  The  Romans  did  not 
accomplish  as  much  as  the  Greeks,  and  the  man 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  incapable  of  doing  crit- 
ical work.  With  the  Renaissance,  the  forward 
movement  began  again  and  from  rational  criti- 
cism the  scholars  of  the  f  ollownig  period  passed 
rapidly  to  hypercriticism.  In  the  latter  part  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  Jesuit  Harduin,  dis- 
turbed by  the  large  amount  of  forged  material 
that  he  encountered,  went  so  far  as  "to  deny 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  29 

the  entire  foundation  of  our  historical  knowl- 
edge, and  to  reject  as  forged  a  long  series  of 
historical  works  and  documents:  Pindar, 
Thucydides,  Dionysius,  Diodorus,  Strabo,  Jo- 
sephus,  Varro,  Livy,  Terence,  Virgil,  Horace, 
Eusebius,  Cassiodorus,  etc." 

A  reaction  naturally  set  in  against  this  ex- 
treme view,  leading  to  the  present  rational 
attitude  of  carefully  testing  all  material  and 
"holding  fast  that  which  is  good."  This  is  the 
solid  foundation  of  External  Criticism,  upon 
which  modern  historical  science  is  built 

But  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  man  of  the 
Renaissance  were  led  into  hypercriticism.  The 
highways  and  byways  of  history  are  strewn 
with  forgeries.  Every  kind  of  source  material 
can  point  to  its  famous  examples.  Some  of 
these  cases  are  well  known  to  others  than  the 
special  student  of  history. 

A  long  list  of  forgeries  could  be  made  under 
the  head  of  Remains.  This  practice  of  fabricat- 
ing relics  of  the  past  and,  for  various  reasons, 
passing  them  off  as  genuine  has  been  continued 
down  to  our  own  day.  Two  of  the  most  famous 
of  those  perpetrated  in  the  nineteenth  century 
are  described  by  Bernheim;  the  first  was  the 
Moabite  pottery,  the  second  the  Sardinian 
literature,  or  "Parchments  of  Arborea." 

After  the  discovery,  in  1866,  of  the  Mesa 
stone  with  its  invaluable  inscription,  in  the  land 
of  Moab,  there  appeared  for  sale  by  a  dealer  in 
antiquities  at  Jerusalem  certain  old  Hebrew  in- 
scriptions similar  to  that  on  the  Mesa  stone. 
In  the  spring  of  the  }-ear  18T2,  there  appeared 


30  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

at  the  same  place  certain  pieces  of  pottery  and 
later  in  the  year  vases,  urns,  etc.,  with  inscrip- 
tions and  drawings,  2,000  pieces  in  all.  The 
articles  were  brought  to  Jerusalem  by  an  Arab, 
Selim,  who  had  been  in  the  employ  of  Euro- 
pean excavators.  The  dealer  in  Jerusalem  was 
charged  with  fraud,  and,  in  company  with  those 
interested,  went  to  the  place  indicated  by  Selim 
and  found  other  articles  of  the  same  nature. 
Although  criticism  was  not  silenced,  many  of 
the  articles  were  bought,  at  the  advice  of  Ger- 
man savants,  for  the  Berlin  Museum.  Careful 
criticism  has  shown  that  the  articles  are  counter- 
feits and  that  the  work  was  probably  done  by 
the  Arab  Selim. 

The  Sardinian  forgery  is  even  more  interest- 
ing. In  1863-65,  there  was  published  in  Italy 
a  series  of  letters,  biographies,  poems,  and 
other  literary  fragments,  supposed  to  have 
been  composed  in  the  island  of  Sardinia  in  the 
period  from  the  eighth  to  the  fifteenth  centuries. 
The  original  manuscripts  were  of  parchment 
and  paper.  The  find  created  a  great  sensation, 
for  it  was  not  known  that  such  a  state  of  culture 
had  ever  existed  in  Sardinia.  The  originals, 
after  publication,  were  deposited  in  the  library 
at  Cagliari.  As  a  heated  discussion  had  arisen  in 
Italy  over  the  genuineness  of  the  material,  some 
of  the  originals  were  submitted  to  the  Academy 
of  Sciences  at  Berlin  for  criticism.  Jaffe  in- 
vestigated the  material  of  the  manuscripts  and 
the  handwriting;  Tobler,  the  language  and 
literature;  Dove,  the  historical  contents.  They 
established,  beyond  the  possibility  of  a  doubt, 
that  the  material  was  forged* 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  31 

The  Forged  Decretals,  the  Gift  of  Constan 
tine,  the  poems  of  Ossian  and  Chatterton  are 
forgeries  known  to  every  school  boy. 

Marie  Antoinette  suffered  much  at  the  hands 
of  the  forger.  The  historian  of  the  French 
Revolution  who  attempts  to  write  the  life  of 
this  unfortunate  woman  is  confronted  at  the 
very  threshold  of  his  work  with  the  question, 
"  How  many  of  the  letters  attributed  to  her  were 
really  written  by  her?  "  The  famous  collections 
of  her  letters  by  Feuillet  de  Conches  and  Count 
d'  Hunolstein  contain  a  great  mass  of  forgeries. 
A  glance  at  the  introduction  to  the  first  volume 
of  the  collection  by  La  Rocheterie  and  DeBeau- 
court  ( Paris,  1895  )  will  give  some  idea  of 
what  a  Herculean  labor  the  determination  of 
the  genuineness  of  the  material  may  become. 

In  1895  a  work  entitled,  "The  Journal  of  a 
Spy  in  Paris  during  the  Reign  of  Terror,"  pur- 
porting to  have  been  written  in  1791  by  one 
Raoul  Hesdin,  was  printed  in  London  by  the 
reputable  firm  of  John  Murray.  The  editor 
did  not  give  his  name,  did  not  state  where  the 
manuscript  was  found,  nor  where  it  could  be 
seen  by  the  skeptical. 

The  work  received  little  attention  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic.  The  American  Historical  Review 
(July,  1896)  remarked  that  "the  unsatisfactory 
point  about  Tlie  Jownal  is  that  no  evidence  is 
given  of  its  authenticity,"  but  no  attempt  was 
made  to  prove  by  a  study  of  its  contents  that 
the  work  was  a  forgery.  This  was  successfully 
undertaken  by  the  English  Historical  Review  in 
the  July  number  of  1896.  It  is  a  good  example 


32  HISrOlttCAL  METHOD. 

for  the  student  of  history  to  study.  The  work 
•was  shown  to  be  a  forgery. 

This  case  is  the  more  interesting  as  the  anon- 
ymous editor  attempted  to  defend  himself  by 
anonymous  letters  written  to  the  Athenaeum. 
Although  the  work  is  a  forgery,  it  is  a  clever 
forgery,  and  it  would  be  well  worth  the  while 
of  the  historical  student  to  give  it  some  study. 
The  absence  of  the  manuscript  rendered,  of 
course,  the  work  of  detection  much  more  diffi- 
cult than  it  otherwise  would  have  been. 

The  question  of  the  authenticity  of  the  so- 
called  "Casket  Letters"  of  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots  is  still  an  unsettled  question.  The  ap- 
pearance of  the  M6moires  of  Talleyrand  a  few 
years  ago  raised  a  discussion  upon  their 
genuineness  that  lasted  for  more  than  a  year. 
The  manuscript  of  Talleyrand  was  not  to  be 
found;  it  had  probably  been  destroyed.  The 
existing  manuscript  was  a  copy  made  by  Ba- 
court.  This  gentleman  had  formerly  edited 
the  correspondence  between  Mirabeau  and  De 
Lamarck,  and  had  taken  great  liberties  with  it. 
This  rendered  the  critics  suspicious,  and  they 
were  naturally  desirous  to  know  why  the  origi- 
nal manuscript  had  been  destroyed  and  how 
much  of  the  Me'inoires  was  the  work  of  Talley- 
rand and  how  much  the  work  of  Bacourt. 
They  will  probably  never  know. 

In  1897,  the  English  Historical  Review  and 
the  German  Historische  Zeitschrift  contained 
interesting  critical  articles  on  a  series  of  secret 
reports  on  the  French  Revolution  published  in 
the  Dropmore  Papers. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

The  M6moires  de  Weber  on  the  French 
Revolution  is  largely  the  work  of  Lolly-Tollen- 
dal,  and  it  is  claimed  that  the  Comte  de  Segur 
wrote  the  M6moires  de  Besenval.  And  so  the 
list  might  be  continued  indefinitely.  Besides 
the  injury  done  by  treating  forged  material  as 
if  it  were  genuine,  as  great  an  injury  may  be 
done  by  treating  genuine  material  as  if  it  were 
forged.  Bernheim  gives  a  number  of  inter- 
esting illustrations  of  this  kind  of  error.  The 
mistake  is  due  to  ignorance.  During  the  first 
half  of  this  century,  quite  a  number  of  mediae- 
val sources  were  set  aside  as  forgeries,  but 
have  since  been  recognized  as  genuine. 

Enough  has  been  written,  I  take  it,  to  make 
clear  the  necessity  of  testing  the  genuineness  of 
sources  before  using  them.  It  is  now  in  order 
to  say  a  word  about  how  this  is  done. 

Apart  from  the  genius  that  characterizes  the 
most  successful  criticism,  the  indespensable 
preparation  for  this  work  is  the  acquisition  of 
a  fund  of  detailed  knowledge  concerning  the 
source  material  of  the  period  in  which  the  for- 
gery is  supposed  to  have  originated.  Such  a  fund 
is  not  the  property  of  the  novice,  and  only  the 
veteran  knows  how  difficult  of  acquisition  it 
is,  how  much  time  and  patience  and  skill  are  ex- 
pended in  securing  it. 

The  investigation  of  the  genuineness  of  a 
source  is  little  more  than  a  series  of  compari- 
sons systematically  conducted.  The  suspected 
source  forms  a  part  of  the  remains  that  have 
come  down  to  us  from  some  previous  age.  If 
it  be  genuine  it  will  be  in  harmony  with  all  the 


34  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

other  sources  of  that  period  and  bear  the  marks 
common  to  all  the  culture  products  of  that  age. 
A  simple  statement  of  this  fact  will  make 
clear  that  as  difficult  as  it  may  be  to  de'ect  a 
forgery,  it  is  even  more  difficult  for  a  forgery 
to  escape  detection  if  the  critic  possesses  an 
adequate  knowledge  of  the  period  concerned. 

The  critic  deals  first  with  the  form  of  the 
document,  with  the  writing,  language,  style, 
and  composition.  Palaeography  and  philology 
have  obtained  such  a  development  that  he 
would  indeed  be  the  prince  of  forgers  who 
could  successfully  imitate  the  language  and 
writing  of  past  ages  and  deceive  the  critics.  To 
reproduce  successfully  the  style  of  a  certain 
man  of  a  certain  age,  would  be  even  more  diffi- 
cult were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  this  part  of 
criticism  has  been  but  little  developed.  The 
success  of  this  sort  of  thing  is  due  to  the  ignor- 
ance of  the  critic  rather  than  to  the  skill  of  the 
forger.  A  growth  of  knowledge  and  of  method 
will  reverse  these  relations. 

After  dealing  with  the  form  of  the  source, 
the  critic  turns  to  the  contents.  (1)  Do  they 
agree  with  what  we  have  learned  from  other 
genuine  sources  of  the  same  age  and  place?  (2) 
Is  the  writer  ignorant  of  things  that  a  writer  of 
that  day  would  have  mentioned  ?  (3)  Is  he  ac- 
quainted with  events  of  which  he  could  not 
have  known  at  the  date  of  writing?  Of  these 
three  questions,  the  second  is  the  most  difficult 
to  answer.  If  a  forger  passed  unscathed  the 
ordeal  of  one  and  three,  it  would  be  rather  dif- 
ficult to  convict  him  under  two.  It  is  the  so- 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  35 

called  argument  from  silence,  and  is  often  used 
in  a  most  unscientific  manner.  It  is  almost  im- 
possible for  a  forger  to  escape  the  test  of  three. 
Every  man  is  a  child  of  his  own  time,  and  it  is 
practically  impossible,  in  dealing  with  an  ear- 
lier period,  to  conceal  his  personality.  It  was 
through  his  knowledge  of  later  events  that  the 
forger  of  "  The  Journal  of  a  Spy"  fell  a  victim 
to  the  critics. 

If  the  source  passes  the  tests  of  outward  form 
and  of  content,  the  critic  then  asks  if  the  in- 
formation drawn  from  the  source  fits  naturally 
into  the  chain  of  historical  evolution  as  we 
know  it.  A  successful  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion can  be  given,  of  course,  only  by  a  master 
of  the  period. 

Besides  these  main,  tests,  there  are  others  that 
may  not  be  decisive  in  themselv  es,  but  that  sup- 
ply us  with  cumulative  evidence.  Such  tests  are 
found  in  the  peculiar  conditions  under  which  the 
source  was  discovered,  the  use,  by  the  forger,  of 
documents  or  other  records  that  could  not  have 
been  known  to  him  at  the  time  when  the  record 
was  supposed  to  have  been  made,  and  the  de- 
tection of  certain  prejudices  in  the  source  that 
might  explain  the  object  of  the  forgery. 

From  what  has  been  said,  it  ought  to  be  clear 
that  clever  cases  of  forgery  can  be  detected  only 
by  experienced  critics. 

If  the  source  material  stands  the  test  and  is 
clearly  genuine,  the  historian  takes  the  next 
step  in  External  Criticism  by  attempting  to 
localize  the  source,  that  is,  to  tell  when  the  ac- 
count was  written,  where  it  was  written,  and 
who  the  author  was. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


EXTERNAL  CRITICISM:      LOCALIZATION   OF   THE 
SOURCE; 

HAVING  decided  that  the  material  is  gen- 
uine, the  historian  has  to  deal  with  the 
further  question,  "Shall  it  be  admitted 
as  evidence? "  A  reply  to  this  question  is  pos- 
sible only  when  the  material  has  been  localized. 
Now  sources  are  the  results  of  human  activity, 
either  destined  originally  to  serve  as  proofs  of 
historical  events  or  fitted  to  serve  as  such  proof 
because  of  their  origin  and  existence.  The 
first  class  of  sources  constitutes  tradition;  the 
second  the  historian  styles  remains.  If,  then, 
the  events  are  to  be  restored  by  means  of  the 
remains  and  traditions,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that 
the  historian  must  know  with  certainty  to  what 
events  the  remains  belong,  and  that  the  tradi- 
tions actually  come  down  to  us  from  individ- 
uals who  were  themselves  participants  in  the 
events  or  at  least  eye-witnesses.  "It  would  be 
absurd  to  seek  information  upon  an  event  in  the 
writings  of  one  who  knew  nothing  about  it  and 
was  not  able  to  know  anything  about  it."  The 
historian  must  know,  then,  when  the  source 
originated,  where  it  originated,  and  who  the  au- 
thor was.  "  A  document  whose  author,  date, 
and  place  of  origin  are  totally  unknowable  is 
good  for  nothing."  When  these  questions  have 
been  answered,  the  source  has  been  localized, 
and  the  historian  knows  whether  it  may  be  ad- 
mitted as  evidence  or  not.  The  further  ques- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  37 

tion  as  to  what  this  evidence  is  worth  is  dealt 
with  by  Internal  Criticism. 

It  is  evident  that  the  work  of  localizing  the 
source  is  closely  connected  with  that  of  deter- 
mining its  genuineness.  A  source  might  claim 
to  be  the  work  of  a  Frenchman,  living  in  Paris 
in  the  year  1794;  in  proving  it  to  be  a  forgery, 
we  show  that  it  is  the  work  of  an  Englishman, 
living  in  London,  in  the  year  1895.  It  is  the 
object  of  the  investigation  that  marks  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  processes.  In  the  first, 
we  wish  to  know  if  we  are  dealing  with  a  genu- 
ine document;  in  the  second,  if  the  document, 
through  its  origin,  could  contain  the  evidence 
that  we  seek.  A  false  document,  claiming  to 
contain  evidence,  would,  when  localized,  be  of 
no  value;  a  genuine,  but  unlocalized,  source, 
might,  when  localized,  prove  to  be  of  no  value 
for  our  investigation. 

If  the  document  is  genuine,  and  the  name  of 
the  author,  the  time  and  place  of  writing  are  all 
given,  there  is  no  need  of  an  investigation.  A 
distinction  should,  however,  be  made  between 
the  time  of  writing,  and  the  time  of  printing; 
the  place  of  writing  and  the  place  of  printing, 
the  author  of  the  title  page  and  the  real  author. 
If  these  two  sets  of  facts  always  agreed,  the 
work  of  investigation  would  be  rendered  much 
easier.  Setting  aside,  for  the  present,  these 
latter  problems,  let  us  consider  the  more  diffi- 
cult ones;  how  is  the  origin  of  a  source — written 
tradition,  for  example — ascertained  when  there 
is  no  title  page  indicating  the  author  and  the 
time  and  place  of  writing? 


38  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

The  determination  of  the  date  of  a  source  is 
often  a  very  difficult  matter.  It  is  especially 
difficult  when  it  must  be  determined  by  the  can- 
tents  of  the  document  controlled  by  general 
information.  In  the  first  place,  we  endeavor  to 
locate  the  source  in  a  general  way  by  a  study  of 
form,  language,  style,  and  contents.  In  this 
way,  we  place  it  in  a  certain  century  or  even 
generation.  Here  palaeography  and  philology 
are  of  use  to  us.  If  our  source  is  in  the  form 
of  a  manuscript,  palaeography  tells  us  it  was 
written  in  such  or  such  a  century.  Even  the 
school-boy  knows  how  writing  changes  from 
generation  to  generation.  Men  of  thirty-five, 
living  to-day,  have  had  experience  of  three  gen- 
erations of  penmanship;  the  style  of  their  fath- 
ers, the  so-called  Spencerian  style,  and  the 
lately  introduced  upright  style.  Modifications 
of  a  similar  nature  characterize  the  whole  his- 
tory of  writing;  a  knowledge  of  this  history 
enables  the  palaeographists  to  locate  the  manu- 
script approximately. 

The  history  of  language  lends  its  aid,  and  this 
may  be  employed  with  printed  sources.  Words 
and  expressions  are  born  and  die.  The  philol- 
ogist tells  us  that  a  certain  word  appeared  for 
the  first  time  in  a  language  in  a  certain  century. 
If  the  word  appears  in  the  given  source,  it  must 
have  been  written  after  that  century.  He  tells 
us,  also,  that  a  certain  word  disappeared  from 
a  certain  language  in  a  given  century.  If  the 
word  appears  in  the  source,  the  record  must 
have  been  made  before  the  disappearance  of  the 
word. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  39 

But  often  neither  palaeography  nor  philology, 
nor  even  style  can  do  more  than  locate  the 
source  in  the  first  or  second  half  of  a  century. 
How  can  the  date  be  fixed  more  definitely  ? 

Here  we  must  depend  largely  upon  the  con- 
tents of  the  source.  References  to  events, 
known  to  us  from  other  sources,  prove  that  the 
record  was  made  after  the  events  took  place  or 
that  it  arose  at  the  time  of  the  events.  That  is 
shown  by  the  manner  in  which  the  events  are 
referred  to.  Writing  upon  the  events  of  July, 
1789,  Bailly  said,  "If  M.  Barrere  had  been  lis- 
tened to,  many  things  accomplished  by  time  and 
accident  would  not  have  happened,  the  revolu- 
tion would  have  been  less  complete;  but  we 
should  have  been  saved  from  the  anarchy  to 
which  the  constitution  has  been  exposed  and  is 
still  exposed  (Today,  23d  of  February,  1792)." 
Although  the  work  is  printed  in  the  form  of  a 
diary,  kept  from  day  to  day  in  1789,  it  is  evi- 
dent, from  remarks  like  the  above,  that  it  was 
written  several  years  later. 

Brissot's  Me"rnoires  offer  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity for  a  study  upon  the  date  of  writing. 
Even  in  the  first  volume,  dealing  with  his  early 
life,  there  are  repeated  references  to  events 
that  took  place  in  the.last  years  of  his  life.  On 
one  page  he  refers  to  "my  pamphlet  of  the 
month  of  October,  written  against  the  factions 
of  Marat  and  Robespierre,"  and  to  "the 
choices  made  by  the  sections  of  Paris  for  the 
National  Convention." 

So  every  record  made  by  an  eye-witness,  but 
made  some  time  after  the  events,  is  likely  to 


40  HISTORICAL    METHOD. 

supply  some  such  clue,  as  the  above,  to  the 
date  of  writing.  The  use  of  such  expressions 
as  "up  to  the  present  time,"  "at  the  date  of 
writing,"  or  references  to  the  results  of  certain 
acts  that  are  being  described,  are  helpful  to  the 
historian. 

The  failure  to  mention  events  that  the  wit- 
ness undoubtedly  would  have  mentioned  had  he 
known  of  them  is  also  helpful.  This  is  the  so- 
called  argument  from  silence.  There  are  great 
dangers  connected  with  its  use.  The  reasoning 
is,  "  Because  the  witness  does  not  mention  this 
event,  the  event  never  took  place."  For  this 
reasoning  to  be  valid,  it  is  clear  that  all  of  the 
events  must  have  been  recorded  and  the  records 
preserved.  If  the  witness  did  not  record  all 
the  facts,  or  if  any  of  the  records  have  been 
lost,  the  reasoning  would  be  false.  It  would 
seem  to  be  evident,  then,  that  this  argument 
can  be  employed  only  in  certain  clearly  defined 
cases,  namely,  when  (1)  the  "  witness  desired  to 
note  systematically  all  the  facts  of  a  certain 
kind  and  was  acquainted  with  them  all;  and  (2) 
when  the  fact,  if  it  had  existed,  would  have 
made  such  an  impression  upon  the  mind  of  the 
witness  that  he  would  have  been  forced  to  re- 
cord it." 

Sometimes  a  single  reference  is  sufficient  to 
fix  the  date;  often  the  procedure  is  more  diffi- 
cult, and  the  historian  must  determine  the 
limits  within  which  the  record  was  made.  The 
one  limit  is  called  the  terminus  post  quern,  or 
the  limit  after  which  the  source  must  have 
Originated ;  the  other  limit  is  the  terminus  ante 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  ±1 

quern,  or  the  date  before  which  the  record 
must  have  been  made.  The  following  excel- 
lent illustration  is  given  by  Bernheim  of  the 
search  for  these  two  limits:  One  of  the  annals 
describing  the  period  of  Charlemagne  and  his 
predecessors,  and  written  contemporaneously, 
treats  the  years  from  741-791.  It  is  seen  at 
once  that  it  was  not  written  year  by  year,  be- 
cause frequent  references  are  made  to  later 
events.  Assuming  that  they  were  not  put  in  at 
a  later  date,  we  may  make  use  of  them  to  fix  the 
terminus  post  quern.  The  latest  event  men- 
tioned that  may  be  used  in  this  way  happened 
in  the  year  1781.  In  speaking  of  the  Duke  of 
Bavaria,Tassilo,  who  had  been  conquered  and  had 
promised  submission,  the  annalist  writes,  "But 
the  promises  that  he  had  made  he  did  not  keep 
long  (Sed  non  diu  promissiones  quas  fecerat 
conservavit).  It  is  evident  the  writer  knew 
of  the  subsequent  revolt  of  Tassilo  in  1788. 
This  is  the  terminus  post  quern. 

There  is  but  one  reference  that  gives  assist- 
ance in  establishing  the  terminus  ante  quern. 
In  785  the  annalist  writes:  "And  then  all 
Saxony  was  subdued "  (et  tune  tota  Saxonia 
subjugata  est).  He  would  hardly  have  writ- 
ten like  this  had  he  known  of  the  breaking 
away  of  all  Saxony  from  the  rule  of  Charle- 
magne in  793.  This,  then,  is  the  terminus  ante 
quern.  The  work  was  written,  if  this  reason- 
ing be  sound,  between  788  and  793. 

The  determination  of  the  place  of  origin  ia 
often  more  difficult  than  the  fixing  of  the  date 
of  a  source.  The  place  where  the  record  was 


42  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

found,  and  the  imprint,  may  or  may  not  help  us 
in  the  investigation.  A  manuscript  written  on 
the  island  of  St.  Helena  may  be  discovered  in 
the  United  States,  and  the  place  given  on  the 
title  page  may  have  been  intended  to  mislead 
the  censor,  when  a  censorship  of  the  press  ex- 
isted. In  dealing  with  French  works  printed 
before  the  Revolution,  it  is  never  safe  to  accept 
without  investigation  the  place  of  publication 
given  on  the  title  page.  The  writing,  if  it  be  a 
manuscript,  or  the  language  may  aid  us,  in 
case  that  we  have  the  original  language. 

The  subject  matter  furnishes  the  most  valua- 
ble evidence.  How  this  material  may  be  used 
will  be  best  shown  by  another  example  from 
Bernheim.  In  the  early  part  of  this  century, 
there  was  discovered  in  the  monastery  of  St, 
Michael  at  Liineburg  a  few  sheets  of  parch- 
ment manuscript  containing  annals  for  the 
years  1057-1130.  Neither  the  name  of  the 
author,  nor  time  and  place  of  writing,  were 
given.  The  part  from  1100  on  was  clearly  the 
work  of  a  contemporary.  Where  was  it  writ- 
ten ?  The  handwriting  was  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, but  showed  no  local  characteristics.  The 
same  was  true  of  the  language,  that  was  the 
Latin  of  the  twelfth  century.  The  place  of 
discovery  might  point  to  Lower  Saxony  as  the 
place  of  origin,  but  not  without  further  proof. 

An  examination  of  the  contents  showed  that 
the  part  from  1100  on  bore  the  stamp  of 
unity.  Saxon  events  are  treated  in  gre'at  de- 
tail, while  events  taking  place  in  the  rest  of 
Germany,  even  when  important,  are  simply 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  43 

mentioned  or  not  referred  to  at  all.  Changes 
in  the  bishops  of  different  bishoprics  occupy 
much  space,  and  the  writer  is  especially  inter- 
ested in  the  bishoprics  of  Magdeburg,  Bremen, 
Halberstadt,  and  Merseburg  (Saxon  bishop- 
rics). The  most  of  the  princes,  whose  deaths 
are  mentioned,  are  Saxon,  and  the  writer  as- 
sumes that  when  he  refers  simply  to  the 
"Markgraf  Rudolf"  or  the  "Graf  Friedrich," 
the  reader  will  understand  him. 

The  deaths  in  the  f  imily  of  the  Count  of 
Stade  are  given  regularly,  and  the  writer  as- 
sumes that  his  readers  are  acquainted  with 
even  these  relatively  unimportant  lords  ' l  Udo 
comes"  (Count  Udo)  is  the  regular  form  of 
reference.  So  great  is  the  interest  in  this 
family  that  in  the  midst  of  the  account  of  the 
struggle  between  Henry  IV.  and  his  sons,  the 
annalist  breaks  off  his  narrative  to  note  that 
"Count  Linderus,  with  the  surname  of  Udo, 
was  taken  sick,  was  brought  to  the  cloister  of 
Rosenfeld,  and  died  there."  The  mention  of 
this  cloister  in  connection  with  the  Count  of 
Stade  is  an  important  clue.  Investigation 
shows  that  the  cloister  of  Rosenfeld  is  lo- 
cated in  the  land  of  the  Count  of  Stade,  that 
it  was  founded  by  the  Counts  of  Stade.  Who, 
then,  would  be  so  much  interested  in  the 
Counts  of  Stade  as  a  monk  in  the  cloister  of 
Rosenfeld,  and  who  wrote  his  annals  for  the 
circle  of  readers  about  him?  And  a  notice 
from  the  year  113ft  points  unmistakably  to  the 
cloister  of  Rosenfeld  as  the  place  where  the 
annals  originated.  "Cono  abbas  obiit"  (the 


44  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

abbot  Kuno  died)  runs  the  record.  Only  in 
the  monastery  where  the  annals  were  written 
could  a  reference  like  that — a  reference  that  did 
not  give  name  of  the  monastery  over  which 
Kiino  presided  —be  understood.  From  other 
sources,  we  learn  that  Kuno  was  the  abbot  at 
the  head  of  the  cloister  until  1130.  This  was 
clearly  the  place  where  the  annals  were 
written. 

The  determination  of  the  authorship  of  a 
source  is  of  the  greatest  importance.  Not  that 
we  may  simply  know  the  name  of  the  author, 
do  we  seek  this  information,  but  that  we  may 
know  what  kind  of  a  person  he  is  and  what  his 
position  in  society  is.  Only  in  this  way  can  we 
determine  what  his  testimony  is  worth.  This 
information  might  be  made  use  of  even  when 
we  did  not  know  the  writer's  name. 

The  most  common  means  of  determining  the 
authorship  of  a  source  is  to  compare  it  with 
other  sources.  Here  the  knowledge  of  time 
and  place  of  origin  is  of  value,  as  it  enables  us 
to  limit  the  body  of  sources  with  which  we 
work. 

if  we  have  a  manuscript  and  know  it  is  gen- 
uine, we  may  compare  it  with  other  manu- 
scripts of  the  same  period.  In  modern  history, 
where  distinguished  men  have  left  large  quan- 
tities of  manuscript  material  behind  them,  their 
hand-writing  is  wetl  known,  and  it  is  easy  to 
locate  a  newly  discovered  manuscript.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  the  work  is  more  difficult,  for 
there  is  less  individuality  in  the  hand-writing 
and  less  material  for  comparison. 


HISTORICAL    METHOD.  45 

To  determine  the  authorship  of  a  source  by 
a  comparison  of  its  style  with  that  of  other  con- 
temporary works  is  a  difficult  undertaking. 
All  the  world  is  acquainted  with  the  attempt  to 
prove  in  this  way  that  Bacon  wrote  Shake- 
speare's plays.  But  this  sort  of  thing  is  gener- 
ally unscientific  in  two  ways.  In  the  first  place, 
the  investigators  forget  that  all  the  writers  of 
a  given  generation  will  have  much  in  common, 
and  when  we  prove  that  an  anonymous  work 
has,  in  the  matter  of  style,  much  in  common 
with  the  .work  of  a  known  writer,  it  may  be 
possible  to  establish  further  that  these  common 
things  are  found  in  the  works  of  all  other  writers 
of  that  period.  In  the  second  place,  the  inves- 
tigators have  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  an  au- 
thor's style  changes;  it  changes  as  he  grows 
older,  as  he  treats  different  subjects,  -as  he  ad- 
dres^es  different  classes  of  readers.  Much  time 
has  been  wasted  in  purposeless  work  of  this 
kind,  and  although  some  progress  has  been 
made,  this  part  of  method  is  in  a  very  unsatis- 
factory condition. 

It  often  happens,  when  handwriting  and 
style  f:iil  to  give  definite  results,  that  the  au- 
thorship may  be  settled  in  other  ways.  Fre- 
quently references  made  by  the  writer  to  him- 
self, to  his  interests,  occupations,  position  in 
life,  and  persons  with  whom  he  is  associated 
point  clearly  to  some  known  persons  whose  sur- 
roundings correspond  to  those  indicated  in  the 
sources.  Such  a  piece  of  work  could,  of  course, 
be  successfully  carried  out  only  by  a  historian 
possessing  a  large  fund  of  information  on  the 


46  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

period  of  history  to  which  the  source  belonged. 

Sometimes  we  are  aided  in  determining  the 
authorship  of  a  work  by  references  to  it  in 
other  works,  where  the  reference  is  coupled 
with  the  author's  name.  At  times  these  works 
give  exact  quotations  that  are  found  literally  in 
the  anonymous  work. 

As  was  pointed  out  above,  the  important 
thing  in  the  determination  of  the  authorship  of 
a  source  is  not  simply  to  learn  the  author's 
name,  but  the  author's  personality.  To  know 
that  the  writer  of  a  certain  source  was  an  un- 
known A  or  B,  and  to  know  nothing  else,  would 
profit  us  little.  If  the  source  furnishes  us 
abundant  information  upon  the  personality  of 
the  writer,  it  is  of  no  value  to  know  his  name, 
unless  the  person  be  well  known,  and  a  knowl- 
edge of  this  name  will  enable  us  to  obtain  else- 
where further  information  about  him. 

An  example  from  Bernheim  will  illustrate 
the  methods  by  which  the  authorship  of  anony- 
mous sources  may  be  determined. 

One  of  the  most  important  sources  for  the 
close  of  the  ninth  century  in  Germany  is  the 
chronicle  of  Regino,  the  Abbott  of  Priim. 
This  is  continued  from  907-967  by  an  unknown 
writer.  He  evidently  worked  in  the  sixties, 
making  use,  at  first,  of  other  annals  and,  later, 
writing  more  independently  and  treating  the 
subject  more  in  detail.  From  the  interest  that 
he  betrays  for  the  cloister  of  St.  Maximin  at 
Trier,  it  is  evident  that  he  belongs  to  this 
cloister;  the  events  enumerated  are  such  as 
only  a  resident  would  be  likely  to  take  note  of. 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  47 

Now  the  resident  of  a  cloister  engaged  in  literary 
work,  could  have  been  none  other  than  a  monk. 
This  first  inference  gains  support  from  the  fact 
that  the  first  part  of  the  chronicle  was  written 
in  St.  M;iximin  where  Rsgino  took  refuge  after 
being  expelled  from  Priim. 

Among  the  few  persons  of  the  cloister  named 
by  the  writer  of  the  chronicle,  one,  Adalbert 
by  name,  is  especially  prominent.  In  961  it  is 
stated,  that  at  the  instigation  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Mainz,  "of  whom  Adalbert  might 
have  expected  something  better,"  the  monk  was 
sent  as  a  wandering  preacher  to  Russia.  He 
was  fitted  out  for  the  journey  by  the  king.  In 
962,  he  returned  from  his  bootless  mission, 
passing  through  great  dangers  and  receiving  a 
most  hearty  welcome  at  home.  The  writer  is 
so  well  informed  upon  the  adventures  of  Adal- 
bert and  speaks  of  them  with  so  much  feeling 
that  he  must  have  been  on  intimate  terms  with 
him,  or  he  must  have  been  Adalbert  himself. 
For  this  last  presumption  there  is  considerable 
evidence  drawn  from  what  we  know  about  Adal- 
bert from  other  sources.  In  966,  he  was  made 
Abbot  at  Weissenburg,  and  in  968  became  Arch- 
bishop of  Magdeburg.  From  his  career,  it  is 
evident  that  he  was  an  educated  man.  The 
writer  of  the  chronicle  shows  by  his  language 
and  the  character  of  his  narrative  that  he  pos- 
sessed a  culture  not  common  in  that  day.  The 
chronicle  mentions  the  transfer  of  Adalbert  to 
Weissenburg  and  breaks  off  with  the  year  968, 
the  year  when  he  was  raised  to  the  archbishopric. 
It  may  be  said,  then,  "  with  the  greatest  prob- 


48  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

ability,  if  not  with  certainty,  that  Adalbert 
was  the  writer  of  the  continuation  of  Regino's 
chronicle." 

Such  are  the  problems  to  be  solved  in  the  lo- 
calization of  a  source,  and  such  are  some  of  the 
methods  of  solving  them. 


CHAPTER  V. 


EXTERNAL  CRITICISM:     ANALYSIS  OF  THE  SOURCE 
AND  RESTORATION  OF  THE  TEXT. 

r  I  ^HE  work  of  External  Criticism  is  not  com- 
pleted when  the  source  has  been  shown  to 
be   genuine   and   has    been    localize  1.      It 
still  remains  for  the  student  of  history  to  ana- 
lyze his  sources  and,  in  some  cases,  even  to  en- 
deavor to  restore  the  printed  or  written  text, 
corrupted  by  copyists. 

The  need  of  text  analysis  is  self-evident.  In 
the  first  place,  all  of  the  events  recorded  by  a 
witness  have  not,  as  a  rule,  been  directly  ob- 
served by  him.  Not  all  parts  of  his  record  are 
equally  valuable  and  the  first-hand  evidence 
can  be  separated  from  the  derived  only  by  anal- 
ysis. In  the  second  place,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
historical  facts  are  established  by  the  agree- 
ment among  independent  witnesses.  It  is  of 
the  first  importance,  then,  that  the  independ- 
ence of  the  witnesses  should  be  established,  and 
this  is  done  by  studying  the  relation  of  one 
source  to  another.  I  shall  consider,  then,  (1) 
the  analysis  of  a  single  source;  and  (2)  the  an- 
alysis of  the  relationship  existing  among  sev- 
eral sources. 

Failure  to  analyze  their  sources  and  to  dis- 
tinguish between  what  the  witness  knows  first 
hand  and  what  he  has  derived  from  others  is 
one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  uncritical  his- 
torian. Having  decided  that  the  work  as  a  whole 


50  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

is  genuine,  and  that  it  was  written  by  a  Con- 
temporary who  lived  in  the  midst  of  the  evente 
described,  the  general  inference  is  made  that 
all  the  evidence  contained  in  the  record  must  be 
source  material.  This  is,  of  course,  as  a  rule,  a 
false  inference,  but  it  is  surprising  how  long  it 
has  taken  historical  science  to  get  beyond  it. 

Thucydides  wrote  the  history  of  the  Pelo- 
pormesian  war.  The  work  is  preceded  by  an  in- 
troduction in  which  he  deals  with  the  history  of 
Greece  up  to  his  own  day.  It  is  self-evident 
that  Thucydides  could  have  witnessed  but  a  small 
part  of  the  events  that  he  recorded;  for  the 
events  of  his  own  day,  he  obtained  his  informa- 
tion largely  from  eye  witnesses,  while  for  the 
past  he  was  dependent  upon  written  and  oral 
tradition.  It  is  necessary  (1)  to  analyze  the 
work  and,  if  possible,  to  separate  Thucydides' 
personal  knowledge  from  his  information  de- 
rived from  other  sources;  and  (2)  to  learn,  if 
possible,  what  the  other  sources  were. 

Neither  of  these  operations  can  be  success- 
fully carried  out.  For  although  Thucydides, 
in  referring  to  his  methods  of  work,  states  (I., 
22)  that  he  gave  "the  facts  of  what  was  done 

in  the  war only  after  investigating  them 

accurately  in  every  particular,  as  far  as  possi- 
ble," he  seldom,  if  ever,  gives  his  source  of  in- 
formation. The  necessity  of  proof  was  not 
realized  in  his  day.  -Incidentally  he  tells  us 
that  he  suffered  from  the  plague  (II.,  48  ),  com- 
manded in  Thrace  (IV.,  104)  and  was  exiled 
(V.,  26);  but  these  statements  are  notmade  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  us  where  he  obtained 
his  information. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  51 

It  ought  to  be  clear  by  this  time  that  the  fact 
that  Thucydides  wrote  the  "History  of  the 
Peloponnesian  War "  does  not  justify  the  his- 
torian in  accepting  the  whole  work  as  the  result 
of  his  observations.  It  is  evidently  composed 
of  material  of  unequal  value.  How  unsci- 
entifically much  of  the  work  has  been  done  in 
the  past  will  be  realized  when  it  is  stated  that 
the  question  as  to  whether  the  Boeotians  mi- 
grated from  Thessaly  to  Boeotia  in  early  times 
has  been  often  settled  in  the  past  by  a  quota- 
tion from  Thucydides  (I.,  12).  When  it  is 
remembered  that  if  there  ever  was  such  a 
migration,  it  must  have  taken  place  several 
hundred  years  before  his  day  and  that  the 
event  must  have  been  without  a  written  record 
for  many  generations,  it  will  be  easy  to  com- 
prehend the  desperate  straits  in  which  the  his- 
torian finds  himself  who  cites  Thucydides  on 
such  a  point  and  really  believes  that  he  has 
proved  anything  by  the  citation. 

A  vast  amount  of  time  and  labor  have  been 
expended  on  the  analysis  of  the  Greek  and  Ro- 
man historians.  After  a  careful  examination 
of  all  the  attempts  to  analyze  the  sources  of 
Roman  history,  Dr.  Carl  Peter  (Zur  Kritik  der 
Quellen  der  alteren  Romischen  Geschichte, 
Halle,  1879)  concludes  that,  for  the  most  part, 
such  work  can  lead  to  nothing  definite  (page 
166).  The  same  remark  would  apply  to  the 
larger  part  of  the  written  traditions  on  the  his- 
tory of  Greece.  Some  of  the  possibilities, 
however,  are  shown  in  KirchhofFs  "  Thuky 
dides  und  sein  Urkundenmaterial,  Berlin. 


52  HISTORICAL,  METHOD. 

1895,"  especially  in  the  study  of  the  truce  be- 
tween Athens  and  Sparta  (IV.,  118,  119). 
What  our  sources  are  for  early  Roman  history 
may  be  learned  from  Pelham  (Outlines  of  Ro- 
man  History,  N.  Y.,  1893,  page  3),  namely,  the 
tradition  as  established  in  the  time  of  Livy 
and  Dionysius  (about  first  century,  B.  C.). 
Under  these  circumstances,  one  would  be  justi- 
fied in  saying  that  we  know  practically  noth- 
ing about  the  first  few  centuries  of  Roman  his- 
tory. It  is  source  analysis  that  has  led  to  these 
results.  They  are  negative,  it  is  true,  but  the 
acceptance  of  negative  results  in  the  place  of 
unscientific  and  impossible  constructions  repre- 
sents a  distinct  step  in  advance. 

"  Most  historians,"  says  Seignobos,  "  refrain 
from  rejecting  a  legend  till  its  falsity  has  been 
proved,  and  if  by  chance  no  document  has  been 
preserved  to  contradict  it,  they  adopt  it  pro- 
visionally. This  is  how  the  first  five  centuries 
of  Rome  are  dealt  with.  This  method,  unfor- 
tunately still  too  general,  helps  to  prevent  his- 
tory from  being  established  as  a  science." 

But  more  satisfactory  results  are  obtained  in 
the  study  of  periods  nearer  our  own  time. 
The  period  of  the  French  Revolution  is  a  verita- 
ble Tummelplatz  for  untrained  historians.  .  No- 
where does  the  neglect  of  source  analysis  lead 
to  more  disastrous  results.  For  the  events  of 
1789  the  Moniteur  and  the  Archives  parlemen- 
taires  are  commonly  referred  to  as  sources. 
There  are  copies  of  the  Moniteur  dealing  with 
the  events  from  May  5,  1789,  but  the  publica- 
tion of  the  paper  did  not  begin  until  Novem- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

ber  of  that  year.  Several  years  later  the 
desire  to  make  the  file  complete  for  the  revolu- 
tion led  the  editors  to  publish  the  back  num- 
bers from  May  5  until  the  real  publication 
began.  This  port'on  of  the  paper  can,  in  no 
sense,  be  called  a  source;  it  is  a  second-hand 
compilation.  An  analysis  of  the  material  con- 
tained in  it  shows  that  other  newspapers  (Mira- 
beau's  Courrier  de  Provence],  me'moires  (Bailly), 
and  contemporary  histories  (Histoire  de  la 
revolution  par  deux  amis  de  la  liberty)  were 
made  usa  of  it.  Ranke  has  an  interesting 
study  on  the  Moniteur  in  his  "Revolution- 
skriege."  He  there  points  out  that  the  compi- 
lation for  the  year  1789  is  composed  of  two 
parts;  the  second  part,  dealing  with  the  events 
happening  outside  the  Assembly,  is  tiken  al- 
most bodily  from  the  history  by  "Two  Friends 
of  Liberty,"  referred  to  above.  It  is  clear, 
then,  that,  instead  of  using  the  Moniteur,  we 
should  go  back  to  the  source  used  by  the  com- 
pilers of  the  Moniteur.  Even  here  the  need  of 
source  analysis  will  still  be  felt,  for  Flammer- 
mont  tells  us,  in  his  work,  "La  journ&e  du  14 
juillet,  1789,  Paris,  1892,"  that  for  this  great 
event  the  work  has  "no  original  value."  The 
authors  utilized  the  most  of  the  accounts  by 
eye  witnesses  that  had  been  published  when 
they  composed  their  history,  but  as  we  have 
the  same  works  at  our  disposal  we  pass  on  to 
them,  and  begin  anew  the  task  of  analysis. 
This  one  example  ought  to  be  sufficient  to 
establish  the  necessity  of  source  analysis. 
The  state  of  the  Archives  parlementaires  is 


54:  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

even  worse  than  that  of  the  Moniteur.  The 
portion  of  the  work  devoted  to  1789  was  com- 
piled about  thirty  years  ago  and  the  chief 
source  was  the  Moniteur!  The  work  was  done 
at  the  expense  of  the  French  government.  It 
is  now  being  done  over  again  by  M.  Brette. 
That  is  a  good  example  of  the  loss  of  time  and 
money  resulting  from  unscientific  work.  More 
than  that,  the  work  has  been  often  read  by 
those  who  did  not  know  its  character  and  the 
generalizations  based  upon  it  are  often  un- 
sound. A  good  criticism  is  found  in  Brette, 
<l  Les  Constituantes,  Paris,  1897,"  page  33. 

While  examining  a  letter  written  byMirabeau 
in  1788  to  a  friend  in  Germany,  I  was  struck 
by  the  familiar  appearance  of  a  large  part  of 
it,  but  was  unable  to  explain  it.  Shortly  after 
that,  I  had  occasion  to  make  use  of  a  pam- 
phlet written  in  1788 — one  that  I  had  already 
examined — and  I  found  the  solution  of  the 
problem.  Mirabeau  had  copied  whole  para- 
graphs from  this  work  and  sent  them  out  as 
his  own.  This  was  one  of  Mirabeau's  great 
failings,  and,  if  we  accepted  without  reserve 
the  opinions  of  some  of  the  men  that  co-oper- 
ated with  him,  we  should  believe  that  all  his 
plumage  was  borrowed.  Source  analysis  is  no 
easy  task,  but  it  is  clearly  indispensable. 

I  have  dealt  thus  with  the  analysis  of  the  sin- 
gle source  and  the  attempt  to  determine  its 
composition;  I  shall  now  consider  the  relation- 
ship among  sources.  The  importance  of  this 
investigation  has  already  been  pointed  out;  it  is 
the  indispensable  foundation  for  historical  cer- 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  55 

tainty.  The  testimonj'-  of  two  or  more  eye  wit- 
nesses is  sufficient  to  establish  a  fact,  but  on  the 
condition  that  the  witnesses  are  independent  of 
each  other.  The  failure  to  meet  this  condition 
is  a  common  occurrence.  Students  appear  to 
think  that  a  fact  is  established  by  the  number 
of  references  in  support  of  it,  the  question  of 
independence  being  entirely  overlooked.  They 
do  not  stop  to  consider  the  fact  that  if  five  ref- 
erences to  an  event  are  found  and  four  of  these 
five  draw  their  information  from  the  fifth,  it  is 
sufficient  to  give  the  one  reference;  it  does  not 
strengthen  the  case  to  add  the  remaining  four 
references.  Certain  events  happening  on  the 
14th  of  July,  1789,  are  reported  in  the  Moniteur, 
in  the  history  by  "  Deux  amis  de  la  liberte"  and 
in  the  "  Proces-verhal "  of  the  city  government  of 
Paris.  A  careless  investigator  would  think  that 
he  had  three  independent  witnesses.  We  know 
that  he  has  but  one,  the  "  Proces-verbal" 

When  we  have  before  us  two  or  three  records 
dealing  with  the  same  events,  how  is  their  re- 
lationship determined?  The  question  is  often 
settled  by  the  localization  of  the  sources.  From 
this  process  we  may  learn  that  only  one  could 
have  had  direct  knowledge  of  the  event;  the 
others  have  only  indirect  information.  When 
the  question  can  not  be  settled  thus  readily,  it 
is  necessary  to  compare  the  differents  texts. 
The  procedure  rests  on  two  pyschological  ax- 
ioms: (1)  when  two  individuals  perceive  the 
same  event  they  neither  seize  upon  the  same 
details  nor  report  them  in  the  same  way;  (2) 
when  two  individuals  give  expression  to  inde- 


56  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

pendent  conceptions,  they  never  make  use  of 
exactly  the  same  form.  From  these  axioms,  we 
draw  the  inference  that  if  two  or  more  sources 
report  the  same  facts  in  the  same  or  nearly  the 
same  form,  these  accounts  have  not  been  inde- 
pendently conceived.  This  axiom  dealing  with 
expression  does  not,  of  course,  include  those 
fixed  forms,  found  in  every  language,  represent- 
ing neither  independent  thought-conception  nor 
thought-expression. 

Even  when  the  language  is  different,  if  the 
details  are  complex,  and  their  arrangement  the 
same,  it  is  sufficient  to  establish  dependence. ' 
But  if  the  event  is  a  simple  one,  it  might  not 
be  possible  to  establish  the  relationship  be- 
tween the  sources  when  similarity  in  expres- 
sion is  lacking. 

In  considering  the  relationship  of  two  sources 
known  to  be  related,  the  problem  may  be 
solved  in  various  ways.  If  we  find  in  one 
source  a  misunderstanding  of  an  expression 
correctly  used  in  the  other,  then  the  last  is 
clearly  the  original.  When  the  style  of  one 
source  is  flowing,  smooth,  and  well  arranged? 
while  that  of  the  other  is  awkward,  discon- 
nected, and  poorly  arranged,  the  latter  is 
clearly  the  original.  When  the  two  sources 
are  the  work  of  writers  with  different  preju- 
dices and  party  affiliations,  the  attempt  to  ar- 
range and  modify  the  facts  taken  from  one 
source  to  make  them  harmonize  with  the  point 
of  view  in  the  other  often  betrays  the  copyist. 
Additions  and  omissions  frequently  furnish  the 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  57 

most  satisfactory  material   for    the   study   of 
relationship. 

When  three  or  more  sources  must  be  ana- 
lyzed the  problems  become  more  complex. 
Here  two  of  the  sources  may  have  drawn  from  the 
third  or  one  may  havedrawn  from  the  other  two. 

In  the  first  case,  we  should  have  possible 
combinations  like  these: 

A  A  A 

G 


B/  \C 

In  the  second  case  the  combination  would  be: 

y  z 


x 

There  is  no  space  here,  were  it  desirable, 
to  work  out  these  combinations  and  show 
how  the  problems  are  solved.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  know  that  they  do  arise,  that  they 
must  be  solved,  and  that  specialists  develop  a 
marvelous  skill  in  solving  them. 

The  analysis  of  the  sources  not  only  en- 
ables the  historian  to  determine  the  relation- 
ship between  sources,  but  even  to  restore  lost 
sources.  The  Germans  have  furnished  some 
remarkable  examples  of  this  kind  of  work. 
Giesebrecht,  in  studying  certain  mediaeval 
chronicles,  discovered  that  they  had  all  copied 
from  a  lost  chronicle  of  the  eleventh  century. 
Gathering  up  the  extracts  embedded  in  these 


58  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

later  works,  he  restored  the  lost  source.  In 
1867,  the  lost  annals  were  discovered,  and  it  was 
found  that  the  main  results  of  Giesebrecht's 
work  were  correct.  Scheffer-Boichorst's  res- 
toration of  the  Annales  Patherbrunnenses  is 
another  remarkable  example. 

When  the  source  is  known  to  be  genuine,  has 
been  localized  and  analyzed,  it  only  remains  to 
restore  the  originartext  of  the  document,  and 
to  prepare  it  for  publication,  if  it  be  a  manu- 
script. This  completes  the  work  of  External 
Criticism. 

The  necessity  of  a  carefully  restored  text  is 
self-evident  in  the  case  of  classical  and  mediaeval 
manuscripts;  it  is  not  so  evident  for  later  doc- 
uments. And  yet  the  fairly  attentive  newspa- 
per reader  sees  every  day  corrupt  texts,  that 
is,  printed  pages  that  have  not  faithfully  re- 
produced the  written  page.  When  he  attempts 
to  correct  the  text  by  putting  the  misplaced 
words  or  lines  in  their  proper  places,  to  substi- 
tute a  word  that  makes  sense  for  one  that  makes 
nonsense,  he  is  doing  on  a  small  scale,  and  in  a 
simple  way,  what  the  text  restorer  does  on  a 
large  scale  and  in  a  more  complex  way. 

How  unreliable  some  of  the  texts  are  .that  are 
based  on  old  manuscripts,  only  the  investigator 
can  fully  appreciate.  A  rapid  examination  of 
the  foot-notes  in  the  Bohn  translation  of  Thucy- 
dides,  coupled  with  an  observation  of  the  ques- 
tionable passages — possibly  later  additions — en- 
closed in  brackets  in  the  text,  will  give 
some  idea  of  the  uncertainty  of  the  results 
attained. 


HISTORICAL    METHOD.  59 

The  explanation  of  all  this  is  not  hard  to  find. 
The  originals  of  these  old  manuscripts — espe- 
cially Greek  and  Latin — have  been  lost.  The 
manuscripts  that  we  possess  are  only  copies  of 
copies,  and  sometimes  worse.  The  great  mass 
of  the  classical  manuscripts  are  not  older  than 
the  fifteenth  century. 

What  possibilities  of  error  lay  in  this  re- 
peated copying!  True  even  for  intelligent 
copyists,  this  becomes  doubly  true  of  the  igno- 
rant workmen  employed — under  competent  di- 
rection, it  is  true — at  the  close  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Hear  what  a  contemporary  says  of 
these  corrupt  texts  (Von  Reumont:  Lorenzo  de 
Medici,  London,  1876,  L,  page  436):  "lean 
not  express,"  says  the  Florentine  chancellor 
once,  "  how  repulsive  the  universal  corruption 
that  has  crept  into  books  is  to  me.  We  scarcely 
find  one  manuscript  of  Petraca's  and  Boccaccio's 
works  which  does  not  deviate  from  the  original. 
They  are  not  texts,  but  coarse  caricatures  of 
texts.  .  .  In  Dante's  book  this  calamity  is 
the  greatest,  as  the  uninitiated  are  often  unable 
to  follow  those  who  are  at  all  acquainted  with 
the  poet." 

The  restoration  of  a  text  can  be  done  success- 
fully only  by  a  trained  specialist.  It  calls  for 
a  great  mass  of  technical  knowledge  and  long 
years  of  practice. 

Langlois  divides  the  possible  problems  in 
text  restoration  into  three  classes:  (1)  Where 
the  original  exists,  (2)  where  but  a  single  copy 
exists,  and  (3)  where  several  copies  exist. 

In  the  first  case  the  process  is  comparatively 


60  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

simple.  The  correctness  of  the  printed  text  is 
determined  by  comparing  it  with  the  manu- 
script. It  is  surprising  how  often  the  most 
careful  scholars  make  some  slight  mistakes  in 
copying.  I  had  occasion  to  collate  a  letter  pub- 
lished in  the  work  of  a  distinguished  historian 
with  the  original  in  the  archives  at  Paris.  The 
letter  had,  presumably,  been  reproduced  liter- 
ally for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  lack  of  cul- 
ture in  the  writer.  The  document  was  a  mere 
note,  and  occupied  only  thirteen  lines  in  the 
printed  text.  I  found  that  the  copyist  had 
made  eighteen  (18)  errors! 

Langlois  gives  an  example  of  one  remark- 
able restoration  where  the  original  was  missing 
and  the  investigator  was  obliged  to  work  with  a 
single  copy;  the  text  was  the  Letters  of  Seneca; 
the  restorer,  Madvig.  The  passage  was  "Phil- 
osophia  unde  dicta  sit,  apparet,  ipso  enim  nom- 
ine fatetur.  Quidam  et  sapientiam  ita  qui- 
dam  finierunt,  etc."  This  did  not  make  sense. 
Madvig  knew,  from  his  study  of  palaeography, 
that  the  original  was  written  in  capitals,  with 
nothing  to  indicate  the  separation  of  words  or 
sentences,  thus:  FATETURQUIDAMETSAP- 
IENTIAM.  Putting  the  lines  into  capitals,  he 
quickly  discovered  the  true  reading.  It  was: 
"ipso  enim  nomine  fatetur  quid  amet.  Sapientiam 
ita  quidam  finierunt."  There  have  been  many 
other  remarkable  restorations  from  single 
copies. 

In  the  third  case,  where  more  than  one  copy 
exists,  it  is  necessary,  first  of  all,  to  study  the 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  61 

relationship  of  the  copies,  to  learn,  if  possible, 
how  many  are  independent.  Having  learned 
this,  by  a  comparison -of  the  independent  texts, 
an  effort  is  made  to  remove  the  errors  that  have 
crept  in  and  to  obtain,  if  possible,  a  better  text 
than  is  found  in  any  one  of  the  manuscripts. 

When  the  original  text  is  restored,  the  work 
of  External  Criticism  is  finished  and  we  are  ready 
for  Internal  Criticism.  In  other  words,  we 
have  decided  what  material  shall  be  admitted  as 
evidence;  it  now  remains  to  be  seen  what  that 
evidence  is  worth  and  by  means  of  it  to  estab- 
lish the  historical  facts. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


INTERNAL   CRITICISM:      INTERPRETATION  OF   THE 
SOURCES  AND  VALUE  OF  THE  SOURCES. 

IN  Bernheim's  Lehrbuch  as  well  as  in  Lang- 
lois    and    Seignobos'   Introduction,  Criti- 
cism is  divided  into   two  parts,  and  the 
second  part  is  called  Internal  Criticism.     The 
agreement  does  not,  however,  extend  to  the  sub- 
divisions.     As  I  pointed    out    in  a    previous 
chapter,  Seignobos  makes  Interpretation    the 
first  head  under  Internal  Criticism,  while  Bern- 
heirn  makes  Interpretation  the  first  subdivision 
under  his  third  main  division,  Auffassung. 

The  authors  do  not  disagree  as  to  what  the 
business  of  Internal  Criticism  is.  According 
to  Seignobos  it  "is  destined  to  discern  in  the 
document  that  which  may  be  accepted  as  true  " 
(p.  117);  according  to  Bernheim,  its  business 
is  to  "  determine  the  reality  of  the  events  "  (p. 
355,  edition  of  1894), 

Why,  then,  should  Interpretation  form  a  part 
of  Criticism  in  the  one  work  and  not  in  the 
other?  Is  it  because  they  disagree  upon  the 
meaning  of  Interpretation?  Apparently  not. 
Bernheim,  it  is  true,  deals  with  both  remains 
and  traditions,  while  Seignobos  has  traditions 
chiefly  in  mind — for  his  purpose,  clearly  a  wise 
limitation;  but  in  dealing  with  written  tradi- 
tions, both  authors  agree  that  the  mission  of 
Interpretation  is  to  discover  the  thoughts  that 
the  writer  expressed  in  the  text.  It  is  true 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  63 

that  Bernheim  states  that  the  work  of  Interpre- 
tation is  to  understand  the  testimony  of  the 
source  in  its  significance  for  the  connection  of 
the  facts,  but  when  he  works  this  idea  out  he 
gives  us  nothing  more  than  Seignobos  does. 
Bernheim's  idea,  as  I  understand  it,  is  this:  the 
isolated  facts  have  been  determined  through 
Criticism,  by  a  comparison  of  the  sources  that 
have  been  tested;  under  Auffassung,  the  student 
should  interpret  these  facts — find  out  what  they 
mean  and  then  combine  them.  But  is  it  pos- 
sible to  complete  the  work  of  Internal  Criti- 
cism, to  determine  what  facts  are  established 
by  the  sources  without  having  first  interpreted 
the  sources?  Clearly  not. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  why  not  introduce 
Interpretation  earlier  even  than  Seignobos  has 
done,  and  make  it  a  part  of  External  Criticism  ? 
To  test  the  genuineness  of  a  source,  to  localize 
it,  to  analyze  it,  we  are  obliged  to  interpret  it, 
to  get  at  the  thoughts  that  the  writer  wished  to 
express,  and  that  is  interpretation.  The  work 
of  interpretation  may  begin  at  the  very  outset 
of  the  work  of  the  historian.  As  Bernheim 
states,  the  moment  that  he  recognizes  certain 
material  as  historical  sources,  he  is  interpret- 
ing it. 

Interpretation  thus  forming  a  part  of  so 
many  of  the  divisions  of  method,  it  is  not  an 
easy  matter  to  decide  just  where  it  shall  be 
treated.  After  taking  everything  into  consid- 
eration, it  has  seemed  wisest  to  me  to  make  a 
compromise  and  treat  the  following  topics 
under  Internal  Criticism:  (1)  Determination  of 


6J:  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

the  Value  of  the  Source;  (2)  Interpretation  of 
the  Source;  and  (3)  Establishment  of  the 
Facts.  I  think  that  good  reasons  may  be  given 
for  such  an  arrangement. 

Although  each  fact  must  be  examined  by  it- 
self to  determine  its  value,  it  is  necessary  first 
of  all  to  form  a  general  estimate  of  the  value 
of  the  work  from  the  character  of  the  source 
and  from  the  individuality  of  the  writer.  It  is 
just  as  legitimate  to  do  that  work  before  tak- 
ing up  the  formal  interpretation  of  the  source 
as  it  is  to  deal  with  the  problems  of  External 
Criticism  before  the  source  has  been  carefully 
interpreted. 

The  value  of  the  material  in  a  source  is  de- 
termined by  three  things:  (1)  The  Character 
of  the  Source;  (2)  the  Individuality  of  the 
Writer;  and  (3)  the  Influence  of  Time  and 
Place.  Following  the  classification  given  under 
Quellenkunde,  Bernheim  considers  the  manner 
in  which  the  facts  are  influenced  by  the  form 
of  the  source.  Language,  newspapers,  politi- 
cal pamphlets,  speeches,  proclamations,  diplo- 
matic correspondence,  chronicles,  genealogies, 
memoires,  biographies,  ballads,  pictures,  etc., 
are  passed  in  review  and  the  characteristic 
features  of  each  brought  out.  Newspapers  ex- 
press the  views  of  a  party,  but  as  a  record  of 
events  may  be  worthless;  a  political  pamphlet 
may  be  accepted  as  containing  the  views  of  an 
individual;  it  is  well  known  that  the  speeches 
in  the  writings  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  his- 
torians are,  for  the  most  part,  simply  rhetorical 
exercises;  war  bulletins,  party  proclamations, 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  65 

etc.,  are  notoriously  unreliable;  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence is  the  "chosen  region  of  lies;" 
the  comedies  of  Aristophanes  hardly  con- 
tain reliable  evidence'  touching  the  men  and 
events  of  Athenian  history;  ballads  are  sources, 
but  their  testimony  will  help  us  little  in  our 
effort  to  establish  the  facts  of  history;  con- 
temporary pictures  are  often  distorted  by  ig- 
norance, prejudice,  and  passion. 

But  it  is  to  tradition,  both  written  and  oral, 
that  Bernheim  devotes  the  most  of  his  space. 
He  traces  the  process  by  which  the  written 
tradition  is  formed,  and  indicates  the  deform- 
ing influences  to  which  it  is  subjected.  It  is 
the  business  of  Internal  Criticism  to  free  the 
tradition,  as  far  as  possible,  from  all  these  in- 
fluences. In  this  connection,  it  is  necessary  to 
know  when  the  record  was  made,  where,  and 
by  whom.  This  information  was  supplied  us 
by  External  Criticism.  The  necessity  of  know- 
ing all  that  we  can  about  the  writer  takes  us 
to  the  second  division  of  Value;  Value  as  De- 
termined by  the  Individuality  of  the  Writer. 

But  before  passing  to  this  division,  a  word 
should  be  said  concerning  the  value  of  oral  tra- 
dition. When  it  comes  to  us  directly  from  the 
witness  it  may  have  considerable  value,  but 
when  it  has  been  handed  on  for  a  generation  or 
more  without  being  recorded,  it  assumes  a 
mythical  form  and  it  is  generally  impossible  to 
separate  fact  from  fiction.  The  rule  is  that 
when  a  student  perceives  that  he  has  to  do  with 
a  myth  or  a  sage,  instead  of  attempting  to  dis- 
cover the  nucleus  around  which  the  work  of  the 


66  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

imagination  has  gathered,  he  shall  discard  the 
myth  in  toto.  Of  course,  I  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  the  material  of  this  character  may  not  be 
of  great  value  in  showing  us  what  views  a  peo- 
ple— Greek  or  Roman — held  concerning  its  own 
past;  this  material  simply  does  not  help  us  to 
discover  what  that  past  really  was. 

This  is  heroic  practice  and  all  students  of 
history  have  not  been  strong  enough  to  follow 
it.  Grote  understood  the  problem  and  simply 
narrated  the  myths  as  the  Greeks  knew  them. 
''Two  courses,  and  two  only,  are  open,"  he 
wrote ;  ' '  either  to  pass  over  the  myths  altogether 

*  *  *  ,  or  else  to  give  an  account  of  them 
as  myths;  to  recognize  and  respect  their  specific 
nature,  and  to  abstain  from  confounding  them 
with  ordinary  and  certifiable  history"  (Vol.  I., 
Part  I. ,  Chap.  XVIII). 

With  this  method,  Curtius  was  not  content. 
He  believed  "that  a  wealth  of  reminiscences 
survives  in  the  myths,  whose  very  essence  con- 
sists in  expressing  a  people's  consciousness  of 
the  beginnings  of  its  history"  (Vol.  L,  Bk.  L, 
Chap.  II).  Working  on  this  theory,  he  at- 
tempted to  separate  fact  from  fiction,  and  to  re- 
construct early  Greek  history  by  the  use  of  the 
myths.  His  chapters  based  on  this  kind  of  ma- 
terial should  be  studied  by  the  young  historian 
as  an  example  of  how  history  should  not  be 
written. 

Returning,  now,  to  the  second  division  of 
Value,  as  Determined  by  the  Individuality  of 
the  Writer,  let  us  consider  its  place  in  Internal 
Criticism. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  07 

It  is  clear  that  the  individuality  of  the  writer 
is  the  most  important  factor  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  judging  the  value  of  written  tradi- 
tion. For  written  tradition  is  nothing  more 
than  the  record  of  some  person's  conception  of 
an  event.  The  value  of  the  conception  depends, 
very  clearly,  upon  the  personality  of  the  witness. 
The  information  that  the  historian  requires 
concerning  the  witness  is  of  two  kinds,  intellec- 
tual and  moral.  Was  he  able  to  observe  exactly 
and  to  describe  correctly  what  he  saw?  Was 
he  desirous  of  seeing  the  truth  and  of  telling 
the  truth? 

It  is  not  an  easy  task  to  answer  both  of  these 
questions  in  a  satisfactory  manner.  Sometimes 
the  larger  part  of  our  information  must  be 
drawn  incidentally  from  the  author's  own 
works.  How  little  we  know  about  the  Greek 
and  Roman  historians!  Herodotus,  Thucydides, 
Xenophon,  Polybius,  Plutarch,  Arrian,  Livy, 
Sallust,  and  Tacitus  are  comparatively  unknown 
men  although  their  histories  are  world-famous. 
What  we  know  about  Thucydides  could  be  put 
into  a  few  lines.  It  is  not  not  known  when  nor 
where  his  history  was  written  (I  mean  exactly, 
of  course);  we  do  not  know  how  old  he  was, 
nor  when  he  began  to  write. 

But  what  is  it,  in  particular,  that  the  historian 
needs  to  know?  He  must  know  what  the  birth 
and  education  of  his  witness  was;  in  what  class 
of  society  he  moved;  what  his  powers  of  mind 
were;  vrhathis  occupations  had  been;  what  spe- 
cial training  he  had  had  that  fitted  him  to  ob- 
serve these  particular  facts  and  what  opportu- 


68  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

nities  he  had  for  observation.  These  would  be 
the  intellectual  requirements  to  uchin g  his  ability 
to  tell  the  truth.  There  are  other  requirements 
that  are  partly  intellectual  and  partly  moral. 
Were  his  prejudices  and  passions  so  strong 
that  he  would  be  unable  to  see  the  truth  or  that 
he  would  unconsciously  misrepresent  what  he 
saw? 

In  connection  with  his  moral  fitness,  the  his- 
torian would  know  whether  the  witness  is  an 
honest  man  or  not;  whether  he  was  filled  with 
a  desire  to  know  the  truth,  and  when  he  knew 
it,  whether  he  would  consider  it  his  sacred  duty 
to  tell  it.  Among  the  few  poorly  established 
data  that  we  have  concerning  the  life  of  Sal- 
lust,  there  is  a  statement  that,  while  governing 
Numidia,  he  plundered  it  and  escaped  punish- 
ment only  by  bribery.  Whether  these  state- 
ments are  correct  or  not  is  of  little  importance 
here,  but  if  they  are  correct,  what  influence 
will  they  have  in  shaping  our  opinion  of  the 
value  of  evidence  coming  from  such  a  man? 

Seignobos  formulates  two  series  of  questions 
to  be  used  in  determining  the  accuracy  and 
good  faith  of  a  writer.  "The  reasons  for 
doubting  good  faith  are:  (1)  the  author's  int- 
erest; (2)  the  force  of  circumstances,  official 
reports;  (3)  sympathy  and  antipathy;  (4)  van- 
ity; (5)  deference  to  public  opinion;  (6)  liter- 
ary distinction.  The  reasons  for  doubting  ac- 
curacy are:  (1)  the  author  a  bad  observer, 
hallucinations,  illusions,  prejudices;  (2)  the 
author  not  well  situated  for  observing;  (3)  neg- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  69 

licence  and    indifference;    (4)    fact   not  of    a 
nature  to  be  directly  observed."  » 

Bernheira  makes  a  third  subdivision  under 
Value,  namely,  Value  as  Influenced  by  Time 
and  Place.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  important  this 
point  might  be.  What  source  can  be  rightly 
understood  if  we  fail  to  consider  the  age  in 
which  it  was  written?  To  what  extent  was  the 
knowledge  of  a  witness  hampered  by  lack  of 
means  of  communication — railroad,  telegraph, 
and  post — as  in  the  Middle  Ages?  How  was 
the  value  of  his  work  affected  by  a  low  stand- 
ard of  truth,  by  an  unscientific  public  opinion, 
by  a  lack  of  aids  to  research,  and  by  defective 
methods?  Was  the  record  that  we  have  before 
us  typical  of  the  best  or  of  the  poorest  work' 
of  the  age?  And  as  to  the  influence  of  place, 
what  was  the  nationality  of  the  writer?  Who 
could  understand  the  value  of  Tacitus'  Ger- 
many, if  he  did  not  constantly  remember  that  it 
is  a  work  written  by  a  Roman,  who  from  the 
point  of  view  of  Roman  civilization  described 
the  manners  and  customs  of  the  primitive 
Germans  for  Roman  readers?  The  value  of 
Caesar's  description  of  the  Germans  is  limited 
b'y  the  fact  that  he  observed  only  the  people 
on  the  border. 

Such  are  the  leading  questions  to  be  ans- 
wered in  the  effort  to  form  a  general  estimate 
of  the  value  of  the  source  as  determined  by  the 
Character  of  the  Source,  the  Individuality  of  the 
Writer,  and  the  Influence  of  Time  and  Place. 

1  This  analysis  Is  taken  trom  the  Contents  of  a  recent  trans- 
lation of  Langlois  and  Seignobos  by  Mr.  G.  G.  Berry.  The  work 
is  published  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  The  title  is  "  Introduction  to 
the  Study  of  History."  This  book  should  be  in  the  library  of 
every  student  and  teacher  of  history. 


70  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

Young's  Travels  in  France  furnish  one  of  the 
best  examples  of  satisfactory  written  tradition. 
The  work  itself  is  a  journal,  where,  as  a  rule, 
the  events  of  each  day  were  recorded  on  the 
evening  of  that  day  and  the  journal  was  pub- 
lished practically  as  it  was  written.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  character  of  the  source, 
little  more  could  be  desired. 

Young  was  an  ideal  witness.  He  had  literally 
been  trained  to  make  just  such  a  journal.  He 
early  became  interested  in  agriculture,  and,  be- 
ing of  a  good  family,  with  considerable  wealth, 
he  was  able  to  experiment  and  to  travel  for  the 
purpose  of  studying  the  condition  of  agricul- 
ture, industry,  and  commerce  in  England  and 
Ireland.  He  published  the  results  of  his  obser- 
vations and  became  famous.  Through  his  work 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  distinguished 
Frenchmen  before  he'  had  traveled  in  that  coun- 
try. He  was  a  born  student,  a  keen  observer, 
and  as  honest  as  the  day.  When  he  went  to 
France  in  1787,  to  do  for  that  country  what  he 
had  done  for  England  and  Ireland,  he  was 
equipped  as  few  men  ever  have  been  for  such 
word.  He  made  three  journeys  through  the 
kingdom,  and  every  facility  was  given  him  to 
find  out  what  he  wanted  to  know. 

Although  he  looks  at  every  thing  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  eighteenth  century  English- 
man, he  is  so  frank  in  his  statements  and  so  de- 
sirous of  being  exact,  that  no  Frenchman  could 
have  been  fairer  to  France  than  Arthur  Young 
was. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  71 

Having:  formed  a   general   estimate   of  the 

~  «3 

Value  of  the  Source,  the  historian  proceeds  to 
interpret  it.  Interpretation  has  already  been 
defined.  Bernheim  treats  of  the  interpretation 
of  remains  and  traditions  and,  like  Seignobos, 
devotes  the  most  of  his  space  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  interpretation  of  tradition.  Under 
this  subdivision,  the  points  considered  are  In- 
terpretation of  the  Writing;  Interpretation  of 
the  Language;  Interpretation  from  the  Char, 
acter  of  the  Source,  the  Time  and  Place  of 
Origin,  and  the  Individuality  of  the  Writer. 

A  historian  must  be  able  to  interpret  the 
writing  of  the  documents  employed.  This  does 
not  mean  simply  ability  to  read  the  letters,  but 
to  interpret  abbreviations  correctly  and  to  un- 
derstand all  the  peculiarities  of  the  record. 
Langlois  says  "Scholars  who  have  received  na 
regular  paleographical  initiation  can  almost 
always  be  recognized  by  the  gross  errors  which 
they  commit  from  time  to  time  in  deciphering, 
errors  which  are  sometimes  enough  to  com- 
pletely ruin  the  subsequent  operations  of  criti- 
cism and  interpretation." 

Some  interpretation  of  abbreviations  is  often 
called  for  in  printed  sources.  In  French  works 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  it 
is  the  regular  thing  to  omit  the  n  or  m  after  a 
vowel  and  to  indicate  the  omission  by  a  mark 
over  the  vowel:  gentil-home,  quad,  no.  The  co- 
lonial records  of  our  country  present  some  in- 
teresting problems  in  the  interpretation  of 
writing. 

The  interpretation  of  the  language  of  a  source 


72  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

demands:  (1)  a  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of 
the  words  of  a  language  used  at  a  given  time, 
(2)  in  a  given  country,  (3)  by  a  given  writer, 
and  (4)  an  understanding  from  the  context  of 
the  different  ways  in  which  the  same  author 
uses  the  same  words  in  different  places.  The 
important  thing,  as'Seignobos  points  out,  is  to 
discover  just  what  the  author  did  say.  Too 
many  historians  scan  their  sources  for  the  pur- 
pose of  finding  something  and  read  into  the 
text  the  meaning  they  are  searching  for.  It  is 
not  an  uncommon  thing  to  discover  that  the 
references  given  to  support  a  statement  have 
quite  a  different  meaning  when  studied  in  their 
context  from  what  they  have  when  isolated. 
How  much  is  demanded  of  the  historian  can  be 
seen  from  the  four  points  on  interpretation  given 
above. 

In  dealing  with  a  Latin  text  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  a  knowledge  of  classical  Latin  is  not  suffi- 
cient. Nor  is  a  general  knowledge  of  Medieval 
Latin  sufficient.  The  historian  must  know  how 
certain  words  were  used  in  a  particular  century, 
in  a  particular  part  of  Europe,  and  by  a  partic- 
ular writer. 

Sufficient  training  combined  with  knowledge 
and  study  will  enable  the  student  to  get  at  the 
literal  sense  of  his  source.  A  second  examina- 
tion may  be  necessary  to  discover  hidden  mean- 
ings, to  interpret  the  real  meaning  underlying 
irony,  sarcasm,  and  allegory. 

Just  as  the  search  for  the  value  of  the  source 
is  helped  by  a  knowledge  of  the  character  of 
the  source,  so  is  the  interpretation  aided  in  tk<* 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  73 

same  way.  The  comedies  of  Aristophanes,  the 
dialogues  of  Plato,  the  writings  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  the  Renaissance  can  be  interpreted 
correctly  only  when  we  keep  in  mind  the  char- 
acter of  the  sources.  Aristophanes  wrote  to 
amuse  the  Athenians;  Plato  used  Socrates  as  a 
mouthpiece  to  express  Plato's  ideas;  the  Let- 
ters of  Obscure  Men  were  written  to  satirize 
the  monks. 

To  interpret  a  source  correctly,  the  historian 
must  so  reconstruct  the  conditions  of  time  and 
place  that  the  document  will  appeal  to  him  as 
it  appealed  to  a  cpntemporary.  To  interpret 
the  source  from  the  individuality  of  the  writer, 
he  must  not  only  be  familiar  with  the  writer's 
style,  but  with  his  conceptions,  his  philosophy 
of  life,  the  circle  of  his  relations  and  interests, 
his  fund  of  information.  In  a  word,  the  his- 
torian must  endeavor  to  put  himself  in  the 
place  of  the  writer. 

Few,  if  any,  historians  accomplish  all  this. 
And  yet,  this  is  the  ideal  that  the  conscientious 
historian  must  set  before  himself  and  toward 
which  he  must  direct  his  efforts. 

The  writing  of  history  is  not  the  easy  task 
that  many  believe  it.  So  exacting  is  it  that  the 
man  who  does  his  work  thoroughly  can  do  but 
a  small  bit  of  research  work.  This,  however, 
should  be  no  cause  for  discouragement.  A 
vast  army  is  at  work,  and  if  co-operation  is 
carried  far  enough  great  results  may  be 
obtained. 

Having  determined  the  value  of  the  sources 


74  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

and  interpreted  tbem,  the  next  step  is  to  make 
use  of  the  statements  contained  in  the  sources 
for  the  purpose  of  establishing  the  facts  of  his- 
tory. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


INTERNAL  CRITICISM:      ESTABLISHMENT  OF  THE 
FACTS. 

THE  end  that  historical  criticism  has  ever 
in  view  is  the  establishment  of  the  his- 
torical facts.  The  determination  of  the 
genuineness  of  the  sources  in  hand,  their  localiza- 
tion and  analysis  are  of  value  to  the  historian 
only  so  far  as  they  enable  him  to  decide  whether 
this  material  shall  be  admitted  as  evidence;  the 
determination  of  the  value  of  the  sources  as  a 
whole  and  their  interpretation  simply  make 
clear  to  him  the  general  reliability  of  his  wit- 
nesses and  furnish  him  with  their  conceptions 
'and  affirmations  concerning  the  subject  under 
investigation.  But  what  is  the  relation  of  these 
conceptions  and  affirmations  of  witnesses  to 
what  actually  occurred?  To  answer  that  ques- 
tion is  the  last  work  of  Internal  Criticism. 

The  material  drawn  from  the  sources  is  di- 
vided by  Seignobos  into  two  natural  groups, 
conceptions  and  affirmations.  The  first  are 
'easily  disposed  of;  the  last  not  so  easily. 

The  testimony  of  a  single  source  is  sufficient 
to  establish  the  existence  and  character  of  a 
conception.  Luther's  ninety-five  theses  con- 
tain the  views  that  he  held  at  the  time  of  their 
publication.  Whether  they  are  true  or  not 
does  not  concern  the  historian;  their  existence 
and  nature  are  established  by  one  genuine  copy 
of  the  theses.  Plato's  Republic,  Machiavelli's 
Prince,  Rousseau's  Social  Contract,  and  other 


76  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

works  of  a  similar  nature  may,  when  known  to 
be  genuine,  be  held  to  contain  the  conceptions 
of  these  men  concerning  government.  Con- 
ceptions of  this  nature  furnish  the  material  for 
histories  of  doctrines  and  dogmas.  The  history 
of  painting,  of  architecture,  and  of  science 
may  be  written  in  the  same  way  from  remains 
of  the  work  of  artists  and  the  architects,  or  from 
the  writings  of  scientists."  '• 

Closely  related  to  conceptions  is  another  class 
of  material,  employed,  for  the  most  part,  un- 
consciously in  the  works  of  the  imagination. 
While  the  imagination  may  construct  wholes 
that  are  not  real,  the  elements  with  which  the 
poet  or  novelist  works  are  drawn  from  expe- 
.  rience.  It  is  possible,  then,  for  the  historian  to 
sift  out  these  elements  and  make  use  of  them. 
This  procedure  is  psychologically  sound,  and 
its  value  may  be  easily  tested.  Examine  any 
modern  novel  dealing  with  familiar  life  and  it 
will  be  readily  seen  that  the  elements  with  which 
the  novelist  works  are  all  real.  I  do  not  refer, 
of  course,  to  historical  novels  where  the  ele- 
ments are  consciously  acquired  and  consciously 
introduced  into  the  picture. 

What  is  true  of  the  literature  of  this  cen- 
tury is  eves  truer  of  literature  of  past  centuries. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  Homeric  poems 
may  be  used  as  historical  material.  The  old 
bards  knew  little  about  the  siege  of  Troy,  but 
they  could  not  construct  their  imaginary  pic- 
tures of  the  earlier  society  without  making  use 
of  the  elements  found  in  the  society  of  which 
they  formed  a  part.  Battles  and  sieges, 
swords,  spears,  shields,  helmets,  chariots,  war- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  77 

riors,  and  horses;  palaces  and  huts;  kings, 
princes,  freemen,  and  slaves;  fields,  crops, 
oxen,  ploughs,  were  things  that  formed  a  part 
of  their  daily  lives,  and  out  of  these  they 
wrought  their  epics. 

There  was  no  Agamemnon,  but  there  were 
great  kings;  there  was  no  Achilles,  but  there 
were  great  warriors. 

In  using  this  material,  however,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  keep  constantly  in  mind  Seignobos' 
limitation.  In  the  first  place,  there  should  be 
a  clear  understanding  of  the  meaning  of  the 
term  "elements."  Elements  are  irreducible. 
They  deal  with  "matter,  form,  color,  and 
number."  Thus  the  historian  may  take  from 
the  poem,  "objects,  their  destination,  and  com- 
.mon  acts."  The  poet  might  speak  of  ''golden 
doors."  That  is  not  an  element.  The  elements 
a'-e  "gold, "and  "doors."  Furthermore,  these 
elements,  drawn  from  literature,  are  not  local- 
ized; we  know  nothing  of  their  frequency,  and, 
if  they  are  drawn  from  a  single  poem,  nothing 
can  justify  us  in  making  generalizations  upon 
them  concerning  the  morality  and  artistic  ideals 
of  a  whole  people.  Yet  with  even  these  limi- 
tations the  results  obtained  from  the  study  of 
such  material  are  not  insignificant.  Without 
them,  we  should  he  unable  to  construct  one  of 
the  most  interesting  chapters  in  Greek  history. 

With  the  establishment  of  the  facts  from 
affirmations  the  case  is  quite  different.  "The 
affirmation  of  a  single  source  concerning  an  ex- 
ternal fact  is  never  sufficient  to  establish  that 
fact."  The  chances  of  error  and  falsehood  are 


78  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

too  numerous,  and  the  conditions  under  which 
the  observations  were  made  are  so  little  known 
to  us  that  we  are  unable  to  determine  whether 
the  witness  escaped  all  these  chances  or  not. 
Criticism  of  tradition  is  negative  work;  it 
simply  lays  the  affirmations  before  us  with  an 
indication  of  their  value,  but  does  not  establish 
any  fact. 1 

These  affirmations  are  only  probable  or  im- 
probable. To  reach  a  definitive  result  another 
operation  is  necessary;  the  affirmations  found  in 
different  sources  upon  the  same  point  must  be 
compared.  The  mechanical  preparation  for  this 
operation  consists  in  gathering  together  upon 
the  same  or  different  slips  of  paper  affirmations 
bearing  upon  the  same  event.  The  cases  that 
generally  arise  in  the  study  of  affirmations  may 
be  grouped  under  three  heads:  (1)  When  the 
affirmations  agree;  (2)  when  there  is  but  one 
affirmation;  and  (3)  when  the  affirmations  dis- 
agree. 

The  problems  under  the  first  head  naturally 
present  fewer  difficulties  than  those  arising  un- 

1  The  reader  will  recall  that  in  the  treatment  of  Interpretation  of 
the  Sources  I  noted  that  "  Bernheim  *  *  *  deals  with  both  re- 
mains and  traditions,  while  Seignobos  has  traditions  chiefly  in 
mind — for  his  purpose,  clearly  a  wise  limitation."  I  did  not  state,  at 
the  time,  what  his  purpose  was.  The  failure  to  treat  remains  has 
been  criticized  by  Bernheim  in  a  review  of  the  book  found  in  the 
January  number  of  the  Vierteljahrschrift  for  1  99.  This  omiss  on 
is  excusable.  The  book  was  founded  on  lectures  delivered  at  the 
Sorbonne  for  the  benefit  of  the  young  students  of  history.  Now  it 
is  very  doubtful  whether  it  is  desirable  to  teach  a  beginner  all  that 
is  known  about  a  subject.  The  college  undergraduate  deals  in  his 
historical  work  almost  wholly  with  written  tradition,  and  a  <  ook 
nerving  aa  an  "Introduction  to  Historical  Study"  might  with  good 
reason  do  a  thing  that  a  complete  treatise  on  historical  method 
could  not  do,  that  in,  emphasize  tradition  and  neglect  remains. 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  79 

der  the  other  heads.  If  the  sources  have  been 
tested  and  been  found  to  be  genuine;  if  they  , 
have  been  localized  and  analyzed;  if  their  value'' 
has  also  stood  the  test,  then  their  agreement 
upon  certain  facts  establishes  these  facts  beyond 
the  possibility  of  a  doubt.  This  kind  of  proof 
has  been  expressed  in  the  form  of  an  axiom  by 
Rhomberg  (Die  Erhebung  der  Geschichte  zum 
Range  einer  Wissenschaft  Wien,  1883,  page  21): 
"  When  two  or  more  contemporary  (eye  or  ear) 
witnesses  report  independently  of  one  another, 
the  same  fact,  with  many  like  details,  that  do 
not  have  a  necessary  or  usual,  but  rather  a  cas- 
ual connection  with  the  fact,  then  the  accounts, 
so  far  as  they  agree,  must  be  true,  if  the  fact 
and  its  details  were  so  clearly  perceptible  that  no 
self-deception  could  have  l>een  possible." 

For  the  axiom  to  be  valid  all  the  conditions 
must  be  fulfilled.  In  the  first  place  the  wit- 
nesses must  be  independent  of  one  another. 
This  point  is  commonly  overlooked  by  the  un- 
trained student.  The  slovenly  manner  in  which 
evidence  is  frequently  handled  is  well  illustrated 
by  Freeman's  comment  on  the  method  of 
Thierry,  the  author  of  the  "History  of  the  Nor- 
man Conquest."  "  He  would  kill  a  man  by  one 
name  in  one  page,"  writes  Freeman  (Methods 
of  Historical  Study,  page  280),  "and  bring  him 
to  life  by  another  name  in  a  later  page,  each 
time  with  a  perfectly  good  reference;  he  simply 
had  not  learned  the  art  of  probing  and  weighing 
his  references  and  finding  out  either  what  they 
meant  or  what  they  were  worth." 


80  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

Even  writers  who  do  not  blunder  as  Thierry 
did  do  not  realize  the  necessity  of  proving  the 
independence  of  their  witnesses.  They  appear 
to  believe  that  facts  are  established  by  a  cloud 
of  witnesses  who  may  or  may  not  be  so  many 
independent  observers.  The  analysis  of  the 
source,  the  only  protection,  against ' '  repeaters, " 
is  trying  work,  consumes  much  time,  and  often 
leaves  the  historian  in  uncertainty.  Yet  upon 
the  doing  of  this  thing,  and,  above  all,  upon  the 
way  in  which  it  is-  done,  depends  the  value  of 
the  facts  established  by  the  evidence. 

The  interdependence  of  witnesses  is  often  of 
a  subtle  kind  that  eludes  the  analysis  of  the  un- 
initiated. Members  of  the  same  party  regard- 
ing events  from  the  same  point  of  view,  they 
are  not,  in  reality,  independent  of  each  other, 
and  their  agreement  upon  certain  points  may 
prove  nothing  more  than  that  they  heard,  be- 
lieved, and  repeated  a  common  report.  Dubois- 
Cranc6's  Analyse  de  la  revolution  fran^aise  is 
apparently  independent  of  the  Souvenirs  of 
Thibaudeau.  Neither  could  have  seen  the  work 
of  the  otherr  for  they  had  been  dead  many 
years  before  the  works  were  made  public. 
Both  men  were  members  of  the  assembly  of 
1789.  ,  On  the  20th  of  June  the  Commons,  ex- 
cluded from  their  hall,  assembled  in  the  Tennis 
Court  and  took  the  famous  oath  never  to  sepa- 
rate. On  the  22d  they  would  have  met  again  in 
the  same  place,  but,  report  says,  the  Comte 
d'Artois  had  engaged  the  court  for  tennis  and 
the  deputies  were  obliged  to  go  elsewhere.  Is 
this  true?  Both  Dubois-Cranc6  (page  22)  and 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  81 

Thibaudeau  (page  35)  state  the  fact  in  these 
terms.  They  were  contemporaries,  members  of 
the  excluded  Commons,  and  independent  wit- 
nesses. Hence  it  must  be  true.  But  were  they  in- 
dependent ?  When  did  they  write  their  accounts 
of  these  events?  Dubois-Crance,  ten  years 
later;  Thibaudeau,  fourteen  years  later.  I 
shall  show  further  on  that  their  sole  source  of 
information  was  probably  nothing  more  than  a 
common  report  that  originated  among  the  ene 
mies  of  the  nobility  and  that  in  time  passed 
unchallenged  as  a  historical  fact.  This  one  ex- 
ample should  be  sufficient  to  convince  the  most 
skeptical  of  the  necessity  of  critical  study  of 
the  sources. 

According  to  Seignobos,  the  only  observa- 
tions that  are  certainly  independent  are  "con- 
tained in  different  documents,  coming  from 
different  writers,  belonging  to  different  groups, 
and  working  under  different  conditions.  That 
is  to  say,  cases  of  agreement  thai  are  fully  con- 
clusive are  rare,  save  in  modern  history." 

But  the  witnesses  may  be  independent 
and  yet  self-deceived.  The  much-discussed 
case  of  the  miracles  of  Bernhard  of  Clairvaux 
offers  a  good  illustration.  The  account  of 
these  miracles  is  found  in  the  "liber  miracu- 
lorum  S.  Bernhardi,  "a  contemporary  record  by 
reliable  eye  witnesses.  The  men  were  cer- 
tainly "self -deceived." 

The  existence  of  the  devil — to  use  an  illus- 
tration from  Seignobos — is  better  established  by 
independent  eye  witnesses  than  the  existence  of 
the  tyrant  Pisistratus.  Not  a  single  coutem- 

6 


£2  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

porary  testifies  to  having  seen  Pisistratus; 
"thousands  of  'eye  witnesses'  declare  that 
they  have  seen  the  devil.  There  are  few 
historical  facts  established  by  an  equal  num- 
ber of  independent  witnesses.  Yet  we  do 
not  hesitate  to  reject  the  devil  and  to  admit 
Pisistratus.  It  is  because  the  existence  of  the 
devil  would  be  irreconcilable  with  all  the  con- 
stituted sciences." 

If  we  are  certain  that  our  witnesses  are  in- 
dependent and  are  not  self-deceived,  we  are 
ready  to  compare  their  affirmations  and  see  if 
they  agree.  The  concordance  to  be  looked  for 
is  not  exact  agreement  in  form  and  content; 
that,  as  was  shown  in  another  place,  is  proof 
of  dependence.  Scientific  agreement  is  agree- 
ment, upon  certain  points,  of  divergent  affirma- 
tions. The  points  where  the  affirmations  cross 
are  the  points  scientifically  established.  Here 
are  two  independent  accounts  written  on  the 
spot,  of  the  employment  of  troops  at  the  Royal 
session  of  June  23,  1789. 

The  first  is  by  the  Englishman,  Arthur 
Young;  the  second  by  the  Frenchman,  Gaultier 
de  Biauzat,  a  member  of  the  assembly. 
Young  says  (Travels,  1892,  page  175):  l'The 
important  day  is  over;  in  the  morning  Ver- 
sailles seemed  filled  with  troops;  the  streets, 
about  10  o'clock,  were  lined  with  the  French 
guards,  and  some  Swiss  regiments,  etc. ;  the 
hall  of  the  states  was  surrounded,  and  sentinels 
fixed  in  all  passages,  and  at  the  doors;  and 
uone  but  deputies  were  admitted." 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  83 

Gaul  tier  writes  (Sa  vie  et  sa  correspondance, 
II. ,  page  136):  "  The  deputies  were  obliged  to 
traverse  a  body  of  troops  in  order  to  betake 
themselves  to  the  hall  of  the  Estates,  without 
having  even  the  liberty  of  making  choice  among 
the  three  avenues  that  lead  there  and  which 
have  been  open  to  the  public  until  to-day." 

The  two  accounts  prove  that  at  least  one 
street  was  lined  with  troops.  Gaultier's  state- 
ment that  only  one  avenue  was  open  to  the  hall 
seems  to  agree  with  Young's  statement  that  sol- 
diers were  posted  about  the  hall  and  were  to  be 
found  in  other  streets  for  the  purpose  of  clos- 
ing all  avenues  but  one  to  the  deputies. 

The  second  group  under  the  Establishment  of 
the  Fact  deals  with  cases  of  single  affirmations. 
4 'In  such  cases,  all  other  sciences,"  writes  Seig- 
nobos,  "folio wan  invariable  rule;  an  isolated 
observation  does  not  become  a  part  of  the  sci- 
ence; it  is  cited  (with  the  name  of  the  observer), 
but  no  inference  is  drawn  from  it.  Historians 
have  no  avowable  motive  for  proceeding  other- 
wise. When  they  have  been  able  to  establish  a 
fact  only  by  the  affirmation  of  a  single  man, 
however  honest  he  may  be,  they  ought  not  to 
assert  the  fact,  but  simply  do  as  the  naturalists 
do,  mention  the  information  (Thueydides 
affirms,  Caesar  says  that):  it  is  all  that  they 
have  a  right  to  assert.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all 
have  continued  the  practice,  as  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  of  asserting  a  thing  on  the  authority  of 
Thueydides  or  of  Caesar;  many  push  their  na- 
ivete so  far  as  to  say  it  in  so  many  words. 
Thus  given  over  without  scientific  control  to 


84  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

their  natural  credulity,  historians  go  to  the  point 
of  admitting  upon  the  insufficient  presumption 
of  a  single  source  every  affirmation  that  is  not 
contradicted  by  another  source.  Hence  the  ab- 
surd consequence  that  history  is  more  affirma- 
tive and  seems  better  constituted  for  almost  un- 
known periods,  from  which  but  a  single  record 
has  been  preserved,  than  for  facts  known  to  us 
by  thousands  of  contradictory  documents.  The 
Persian  Wars',  known  solely  through  Herodotus, 
the  adventures  of  Fredegonda,  narrated  solely 
by  Gregory  of  Tours,  are  less  subject  to  discus- 
sion than  the  events  of  the  Revolution  described 
by  hundreds  of  contemporaries."  He  may  well 
add,  "To  draw  history  from  this  shameful 
condition,  a  revolution  in  the  minds  of  histor- 
ians is  a  necessity." 

I  have  quoted  Seignobos  at  length,  because  the 
point  is  of  the  utmost  importance  and  because 
the  case  could  hardly  be  stated  more  clearly 
and  energetically  than  he  has  stated  it.  How- 
ever, the  turning  point  has  been  reached  and  the 
attitude  of  the  best  men  is  expressed  by  Holm 
in  the  preface  to  his  Griechische  Geschichte 
(I.,  page  xi.  1886):  "My  history  of  Greece 
ought  in  the  text  to  give  an  image  of  the  ex- 
isting material  (sources),  in  that  I  express  my- 
self with  certainty  only  when  the  sources  per- 
mit, while,  on  the  contrary,  I  express  myself 
doubtingly  when  all  or  much  is  uncertain. 
Such  is  not  the  general  practice  to-day  But 
a  historian ,  of  the  first  rank  (Droysen)  de- 
clared at  the  end  of  his  life  that  he  no  longer 
recognized  as  correct  the  method,  so  favorable 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  85 

to  beautiful  and  powerful  narration,  that  pre- 
sented the  results  of  investigation  simply  as 
historical  facts." 

In  historical  writing,  a  readable  narrative  is 
not  the  all-important  thing  to  which  all  else  is 
sacrificed.  The  truth  is  the  thing,  and  it  is  the 
sacred  duty  of  the  historian  to  follow  the 
method  of  Holm  and  others  and  to  make  his 
text  reflect  the  condition  of  his  sources.  When 
the  narrative  rests  simply  on  the  statements 
of  a  single  man,  the  reader  should  know  it, 
should  know  who  the  witness  was,  and  should  un- 
derstand that  such  a  state  of  things  yields  only 
probability  and  not  certainty.  How  common 
the  contrary  practice  is  can  easily  be  learned 
by  rapidly  examining  standard  histories  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  As  a  rule,  facts  stated  with 
the  utmost  certainty  are  supported  by  a  refer- 
ence to  a  single  source— and  often  this  is  only 
a  derived  source. 

The  third  group,  that  dealing  with  cases  of 
contradictory  affirmations,  alone  remains  to  be 
considered.  In  such  cases  the  contradictions 
are  only  apparent,  and  may  be  reconciled  by  a 
careful  study.  Such  cases  I  shall  pass  over,  and 
turn  to  the  problems  that  deal  with  genuine 
contradictions. 

The  independence  of  the  witnesses  must  be 
determined  first  of  all.  This  study  may  dis- 
pose of  the  case,  by  proving  the  witnesses  on 
the  one  side  were  not  independent,  as  in  the 
case  cited  above.  But  it  may  be  necessary,  be- 
fore a  conclusion  can  be  reached,  to  submit  all 
the  witnesses  to  all  the  tests  of  external  and  in- 


86  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

ternal  criticism.  The  witnesses  may  be  inde- 
pendent, but  not  equally  well  informed  nor 
equally  honest.  In  the  case  cited  above,  deal- 
ing with  the  Tennis  Court,  it  is  possible  to  set 
against  these  writers,  making  their  records  ten 
or  more  years  after  the  event,  writers  favor- 
able to  the  Commons,  and  making  their  records 
on  the  spot  or  a  year  or  two  afterward.  Not 
only  do  they  know  nothing  about  the  legend  of 
the  action  of  the  Comte  d'Artois,  but  they  also 
give  most  satisfactory  explanations  for  the 
change  of  meeting  place  on  the  22d.  The  truth 
is  the  Tennis  Court  was  not  a  fit  pluce  for  an 
assembly.  It  was  simply  a  bare  hall — as  bare 
as  it  is  to-day — and,  in  addition  to  that,  on  the 
morning  of  the  22d  was  half  filled  with  a  curi- 
ous public.  In  spite  of  all  this,  every  standard 
history  of  the  Eevolution  repeats  this  legend 
as  if  it  were  a  historical  fact. 

If  the  evidence  on  either  side  is  equally  re- 
liable, there  is,  as  a  rule,  but  one  thing  to  be 
done:  the  historian  must  suspend  judgment  and 
announce  that  he  can  reach  no  definite  results. 

It  is  in  this  way  that  the  suppositions  and 
affirmations  derived  from  the  earlier  work  of 
criticism  are  compared  and  the  facts  established. 
With  this  process,  the  critical  or  analytical 
operations  are  brought  to  an  end.  The  second 
or  synthetic  stage  has  been  reached.  The 
historian  is  ready  for  the  constructive  work  or 
the  Auffassung,  as  Bernheim  calls  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


SYNTHETIC  OPERATIONS:  IMAGINING  THE  FACTS, 

GROUPING  THE  FACTS,  AND  CONSTRUCTIVE 

REASONING. 

r  I  ^  HE  divisions  of  method  treated  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapters  embrace  the  major  part 
of  "the  rules  and  artifices"  that,  ar- 
ranged systematically,  constitute  history  a  sci- 
ence. Heuristic  (Quellenkundeor  Preliminary 
Knowledge)  and  Criticism  (External  and  In- 
ternal) forming,  as  they  do,  the  first  steps  in 
method,  and  dealing  with  the  least  complex 
parts  of  the  historical  process,  have  received  the 
most  attention,  have  taken  scientific  shape,  and 
are  thus  out  of  the  field  of  dilettanteism.  But 
this  is  not  true  of  the  later  operations.  While 
there  is  a  general  agreement  as  to  what  the 
work  of  criticism  is  and  how  this  work  can 
best  be  accomplished,  the  field  of  historical 
synthesis  is  largely  unexplored  territory.  His- 
torians do  not  agree  as  to  the  end,  nor  the  means 
of  reaching  the  end.  Under  these  conditions,  it 
is  no  cause  for  wonder  that  men,  laying  no 
claim  to  historical  training,  write  so-called  his- 
torical narratives,  and  that  these  narratives 
find  acceptance  on  account  of  their  literary,  but 
not  on  account  of  their  scientific,  qualities. 

The  portion  of  Bernheim's  Lehrbuch  devoted 
to  historical  construction  is  the  most  unsatisfac- 
tory part  of  the  whole  book.  Bernheim  might, 
perhaps,  justify  himself  by  replying  that  his 


88  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

purpose  was  simply  to  put  into  systematic  form 
the  results  that  have  thus  far  been  obtained. 
Seignobos,  however,  does  more.  This  part  of 
the  Introduction  is  a  real  contribution  to 
method. 

It  seems  desirable,  at  this  point,  to  again  com- 
pare the  arrangements  of  the  two  books  and  to 
outline  the  topics  to  be  treated  in  this  and  the 
following  chapters. 

The  third  and  fourth  divisions  in  Bernheim, 
Auffassung  and  Darstellung,  correspond  fairly 
well  to  the  Operations  synth&tiques  of  Seigno- 
bos, but  there  are  some  points  of  difference  that 
shou'd  not  be  overlooked.  Bernheim  subdivides 
Auffassung  into  Interpretation,  Kombination, 
Reproduction  und  Phantasie,  Affassung  der 
ullgemeinen  Bedingungen  (conception  of  the 
milieu},  Geschichtsphilosophie  (Philosophy  of 
History),  and  Wesen  der  Auffussung  (Nature  of 
Auffassung).  Darstellung  (Exposition)  is  not 
subdivided  in  the  -table  of  contents. 

Seignobos  subdivides  Operations  synth&tiques 
into  Conditions  g&n&rales  de  la  construction  his- 
torique,  Groupement  desfaits  (Grouping  of  the 
Facts),  Raisonnement  constructif,  Construction 
desformules  g&n&rales,  Exposition. 

I  have  shown  in  a  previous  chapter  that  while 
Bernheim  treats  Interpretation  under  Auffas- 
sung, Seignobos  deals  with  it  under  Criticism. 
Grouping  of  the  Facts,  in  Seignobos,  corres- 
ponds to  Kritische  Ordnung  des  Materials  (Crit- 
ical Arrangement  of  the  Material) — Bernheim's 
last  division  under  Criticism — and  to  a  part  of 
Kombination ;  Reproduction  und  Phantasie, 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  89 

Seignobos  deals  with  in  his  chapter  on  General 
Conditions  of  Historical  Construction,  but  does 
not  devote  a  whole  chapter  to  it;  a  portion  of 
the  chapter  on  Kombination  corresponds  to 
Raisonnement  constructif;  Seignobos  does  not 
deal  with  the  Allgemeine  Bedingungen  nor  with 
Geschichtsphilosophie;  Bernheim's  Darstellung 
treats  the  same  topic  that  Seignobos  deals  with 
in  Construction  des  formules  generates  and  in 
Exposition.  If  Seignobos'  table  of  contents 
were  complete,  he  would  have  a  chapter  on 
"  Imagining  the  Facts;" 

Combining  the  topics  treated  in  the  two  works, 
I  shall  consider  in  this  and  the  remaininor 

'  O 

chapters  the  following  subjects  under  the  gen- 
eral head  of  Synthetic  Operations:  Imagining 
the  Facts,  Grouping  the  Facts,  Constructive 
Reasoning,  Environment,  the  Philosophy  of 
History,  Exposition. 

The  first  three  subjects  form  a  natural  group. 
The  facts  imagined  and  grouped  and  the  gaps 
in  the  evidence  filled  by  constructive  reasoning 
— as  far  as  possible — we  have  completed  the 
narrower  work  of  historical  construction.  It 
is  this  group  that  I  shall  deal  with  in  the  pres- 
ent chapter. 

Criticism  supplies  us  with  isolated  facts,  but 
isolated  facts  do  not  constitute  history.  The 
facts  must  be  organized  and  this  organization 
must  depend  upon  the  character  of  the  material. 
What  is  this  material?  A  heterogeneous  mass 
of  simple  statements,  differing  in  generality,  in 
certainty,and  limited  to  a  definite  time  and  place. 

This  is  the  kind  of  material  supplied  by  Crit- 
icism, and  from  it  the  historian  must  construct 


90  HISTORICAL    METHOD. 

his  fabric.  But  how?  He  can  not  adopt  the 
method  of  the  natural  sciences,  for  the  stu- 
dent of  nature  can  observe  his  facts  directly, 
while  the  method  of  the  historian — as  was 
shown  in  the  introductory  chapter — must  be 
that  of  indirect  observation.  The  work  of  im- 
agining and  grouping  the  facts  calls  the  fancy 
into  play.  It  is  the  scientific  fancy  with  which 
we  have  to  do  and  not  the  poetic  fancy. 

The  poet  is  free  to  create  the  material  with 
which  he  works;  the  historian  has  his  material 
given  him  and  is  limited  by  it,  while  he  is  free 
to  combine  it  under  the  subjective  categories  of 
his  mind.  The  uncontrolled  imagination  is  a 
dangerous  thing  in  history,  and  leads  to  false 
conceptions  and  combinations. 

Before  the  facts  can  be  combined,  the  his- 
torian must  endeavor  to  see  the  isolated  facts 
as  the  witness  saw  them.  He  must  imagine  the 
facts.  Yet  how  imagine  facts  that  will  be  real? 
The  thing  is  possible  only  on  the  assumption  of 
the  identity  of  human  nature. 

If  humanity  in  all  ages  did  not  have  much  in 
common,  it  would  be  impossible  to  reconstruct 
the  past.  For  the  material  with  which  the  his- 
torian works  is  not  simply  the  heterogeneous 
facts  drawn  from  the  sources;  he  works  also 
with  the  categories  of  his  own  brain.  It  is  only 
through  his  own  experience,  analogous  to  the 
experience  of  men  in  the  past,  that  he  is  able  to 
picture  to  himself  the  events  of  the  past. 

But  the  past  is  not  exactly  like  the  present; 
in  fact,  it  is  the  business  of  the  historian  to  show 
that  successive  ages  are  unlike  and  to  make 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  91 

clear  how  they  differ.  The  first  image,  then, 
that  is  aroused  in  his  mind  is  generally  incor- 
rect and  must  be  modified.  The  difficulty  of 
imagining  the  facts  obtained  from  the  sources 
is  largely  due  to  the  circum stance  that  they  are 
psychical  facts  and  described  in  inexact  lan- 
guage. What  is  a  "warrior,"  a  "combat,"  a 
"king,"  or  a  "tribe"? 

To  picture  to  ourselves  facts  that  we  have  not 
seen  described  in  such  unscientific  language  is 
a  disheartening  task,  and  yet  this  is  what  the 
historian  must  undertake  to  do.  Moreover,  all 
of  the  elements  of  the  image  can  not  be  drawn 
from  the  sources.  Attempt  to  picture  to  your- 
self one  of  the  battles  of  Greek  or  Roman  his- 
tory making  use  only  of  source  material?  It  is 
impossible.  In  imagining  the  event  the  histo- 
rian makes  a  complete  picture  of  it  by  drawing 
from  his  own  experience:  but  he  must  never 
forget  to  distinguish  between  these  two  classes 
of  material,  and  must  base  his  later  construc- 
tion only  upon  the  source  elements. 

Having  imagined  the  facts,  the  next  step  is  to 
group  them.  Here,  again,  the  fancy  plays  an 
important  part.  In  fact,  while  much  of  method 
may  be  taught,  the  great  historian  is  the  man 
who  possesses  in  addition  to  technical  training 
the  genius  that  enables  him  to  combine  the  facts. 
"I  am  an  historian,"  said  Niebuhr,  "because I 
am  able  to  construct  a  complete  picture  from 
the  fragments  that  have  been  preserved."  This 
is  a  power  that  few  possess,  but  without  it  no 
lasting  results  are  possible. 

The  simplest  method  of  grouping  the  facts, 


92  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

and  the  earliest  employed,  is  to  group  chrono- 
logically facts  of  all  kinds  happening  in  the 
same  place.  It  is  the  method  followed  for  the 
mo  %t  part  by  the  old  historians  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  The  later  and  more  scientific  method 
is  to  base  the  construction  upon  the  nature  of 
the  subject  matter,  to  select  and  group  together 
facts  of  the  same  kind.  This  has  given  us  his- 
tories of  law,  religion,  art,  literature,  etc.  In 
order  to  treat  the  whole  social  fabric  in  this 
way,  it  is  necessary  to  construct  a  set  of  ques- 
tions or  questionnaire  general,  as  Seignobos  calls 
it,  "founded  on  the  nature  of  the  conditions 
and  of  the  manifestations  of  activity."  This 
questionnaire  contains  the  following  groups:  L, 
Material  Conditions;  II.,  Intellectual  Habits 
(not  obligatory);  III.,  Material  Customs  (not 
obligatory);  IV.,  Economic  Customs;  V.,  So- 
cial Institutions;  VI.,  Public  Institutions  (obli- 
gatory). 

This  method  of  grouping  facts  according  to 
their  nature  may  be  combined  with  the  first 
method  of  chronological  and  geographical 
grouping.  Thus  we  might  have  the  history  of 
Greek  art  in  the  time  of  Pericles. 

But  a  scheme  that  disposes  of  the  facts  com- 
mon to  many  men  and  persisting  through  one 
or  more  centuries  does  not  dispose  of  all  the 
facts.  There  still  remain  the  acts  and  words 
peculiar  to  certain  individuals.  What  shall  be 
done  with  them?  What  is  the  part  that  the 
individual  plays  in  historical  development?  Is 
the  life  of  society  controlled  by  fixed  laws  and 
is  the  individual  a  helpless  atom?  These  are 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  93 

questions  that  divide  the  historians  of  the  con- 
tinent to-day,  and  in  Germany  they  wage  a  war 
that  is  anything  but  merry.  It  is  the  old  ques- 
tion of  necessity  and  free  will. 

But.  as  Seignobos  says,  one  may  not  take 
sides  here.  Both  general  and  particular  facts 
must  be  taken  into  account.  History  is  explan- 
atory of  the  real,  and  the  real  happens  but 
once.  There  is  but  one  evolution  of  society. 
In  this  evolution -"the  facts  that  succeed  one 
another  have  been  the  product  not  of  abstract 
laws,  but  of  the  conjuncture,  at  each  moment,  of 
many  facts  of  different  kinds.  This  conjunc- 
ture, sometimes  called  chance,  has  produced  a 
series  of  accidents  which  have  determined  the 
particular  march  of  the  evolution.  The  evolu- 
tion is  intelligible  only  by  the  study  of  these 
accidents;  history  is  here  on  the  same  footing 
with  geology  and  palaeontology." 

The  history  of  Roman  institutions  would  be 
unintelligible  without  a  knowledge  of  the  bat- 
tle of  Pharsalus. 

"History  is  thus  obliged  to  combine  the 
study  of  general  facts  with  the  study  of  cer- 
tain particular  facts."  This  mixed  character — 
half  science,  half  narrative  of  adventures — has 
often  given  rise  to  the  question,  "  Is  history  a 
science  or  an  art?  " 

There  are  two  kinds  of  facts,  then,  to  be 
grouped:  general  facts  and  particular  facts. 
I  shall  treat  them  in  order. 

In  dealing  with  the  general  facts  that  treat  of 
habits,  manners,  and  customs,  institutions,  lan- 
guage, religion,  etc.,  after  deciding  what  habit 


94  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

we  shall  study,  it  is  necessary,  first  of  all,  to  de- 
termine the  group  to  which  the  habit  belongs. 
The  natural  tendency  is  to  assume  that  a  group 
is  made  up  of  like  units.  Because  a  group  of 
people  talk  the  same  language  we  are  apt  to 
think  that  the  members  of  the  group  have 
everything  else  in  common.  A  minute's  reflec- 
tion would  make  clear  the  falsity  of  this  infer- 
ence, "  for  no  real  group,  not  even  a  central- 
ized society,  is  a  homogeneous  entity.  What  is 
the  group  of  people  that  talk  Greek,  the  Chris- 
tian group,  the  group  of  modern  science?  The 
English  nation  consists  of  Gauls,  Scots,  and 
Irish;  the  Catholic  church  consists  of  the  faith- 
ful scattered  throughout  the  entire  world  and 
differing  in  everything  except  religion."  The 
Swiss  are  united  in  government,  but  are  divided 
in  language  (French,  German,  Italian)  and  in 
religion  (Catholic  and  Protestant).  Think  of 
the  bewildering  way  in  which  the  groups, 
made  up  of  individuals  with  one  or  more  habits 
in  common,  overlap  in  the  United  States! 

We  must  know,  then,  what  people  compose 
the  group;  by  what  bonds  they  are  united; 
what  activities  they  have  in  common,  and  in 
what  they  differ.  This  study  will  show  us  for 
what  a  group  may  serve.  For  the  study  of 
language,  religion,  etc.,  we  would  not  select  a 
national  group. 

But  even  when  a  group  has  some  habit 
in  common,  the  group  is  not  homogeneous; 
there  are  subdivisions.  Language  is  divided 
into  dialects  and  religion  into  sects.  It  is  nec- 
essary to  determine  the  subdivision  of  each 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  95 

When  all  the  habits  of  a  society  have  been 
studied,  the  society  as  a  whole  must  be  examined 
in  its  relation  to  other  societies  of  the  same 
time.  "This  is  the  study  of  international  insti- 
tutions, intellectual,  economic,  and  political 
(diplomacy  and  the  usages  in  war).  *  *  * 
To  all  this  it  would  be  necessary  to  add  the 
study  of  habits  common  to  many  societies  and 
relations  that  do  not  take  on  an  official  form." 

All  this  gives  us  nothing  more  than  a  descrip- 
tion of  society  in  repose.  History,  however, 
treats  of  society  in  motion,  evolving.  It  is 
necessary  to  trace  the  manner  in  which  these 
institutions  change.  The  steps  in  this  process 
are:  (1)  The  choice  of  the  fact  whose  evolution 
is  to  be  traced;  (2)  the  period  of  the  evolution; 
(3)  the  successive  steps;  and  (4)  the  means  by 
which  the  evolution  has  been  brought  about. 

The  particular  facts,  the  accidents  of  history, 
still  remain  to  be  treated.  They  are  "  the  facts 
that  have  acted  upon  the  evolution  of  each  of 
the  habits  of  humanity."  All  of  these  facts 
taken  together,  classed  by  order  of  time  and 
country,  would  bind  together  the  special  histo- 
ries of  the  institutions  and  give  a  picture  of 
the  "ensemble  of  historic  evolution."  But  all 
of  the  facts  can  not  be  described.  Which  shall 
be  chosen?  Those  without  which  the  evolution 
can  not  be  'described.  The  fact  in  itself  may 
have  been  small;  the  effect  produced  may  have 
been  decisive,  and  the  effect  is  the  all-important 
thing. 

Both  in  special  histories  (the  study  of  habits) 
and  in  general  histories  (the  study  of  decisive 


96  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

accidents)  it  is  necessary  to  mark  the  stages  in 
the  evolution,  to  divide  it  into  periods.  This 
is  done  by  means  of  events.  For  the  special 
history,  an  event  that  has  produced  the  for- 
mation or  the  change  of  a  habit  becomes  the 
commencement  or  end  of  a  period.  Here  the 
event  is  generally  of  the  same  species  as  those 
that  form  the  object  of  the  study,  while  in  gen- 
eral history  the  periods  embrace  the  evolution 
of  several  kinds  of  facts. 

The  Migrations,  the  Renaissance,  the  Ref- 
ormation, the  French  Revolution  were  all- 
embracing  in  their  effect  on  society. 

The  periods  thus  formed  are  of  unequal 
length.  For  evolution  is  not  regular  and  a 
period  of  slow  uneventful  evolution  is  often 
followed  by  an  age  of  rapid,  dramatic  trans- 
formation. 

This  rapid,  fragmentary  presentation  of  the 
grouping  of  the  facts  is  necessarily  unsatisfac- 
tory. The  most  exhaustive  treatise  would  leave 
but  abstract  conceptions  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader  when  unaccompanied  by  the  study  of 
typical  cases.  If  we  would  learn  how  to  group 
material,  we  must  not  only  try  our  own  hands  at 
it,  but  we  must  study  the  works  of  successful  his- 
torians. Seignobos'  "  Histoire  politique  de  V 
Europe  contemporaine^*  is  an  excellent  exam- 
ple, because  it  enables  us  to  see  how  well  he 
applies  his  own  theory.  The  preface  contains 
a  discussion  of  the  kinds  of  classification — log- 

•  The  work  is  being  translated  and  will  be  published  by  Henry 
Holt  &  Co. 


HISTORICAL    MKTHOD.  Jj7 

ical,  chronological,  and  geographical — and  tti3 
advantages  of  each. 

In  the  work,  the  three  kinds  of  classifications 
are  combined.  In  the  first  part,  the  geograph- 
ical order  is  followed  and  the  interior  history 
of  each  state  is  studied  separately  and  succes- 
sively; in  the  second  part,  the  logical  order  is 
employed  and  the  political  phenomena  common 
to  the  different  European  societies  are  grouped 
together;  in  the  third  part,  the  chronological 
order  is  used,  and  the  exterior  relations  of  the 
states  considered.  The  volume  deserves  a  care- 
ful study  as  a  successful  attempt  at  scientific 
grouping. 

The  picture  formed  by  grouping  the  facts 
would  be  much  less  complete,  if  we  had  only 
the  material  that  criticism  furnished  us.  In 
this  material,  there  are  many  gaps.  These 
gaps  become  noticeable  during  the  work  of 
grouping  the  facts,  and  the  historian  endeavors 
to  meet  this  difficulty  by  constructive  reason- 
ing. "  We  set  out  from  the  facts  made  known 
to  us  by  the  sources,  in  order  to  infer  new 
facts.  If  the  reasoning  is  correct,  this  method 
of  obtaining  knowledge  is  legitimate." 

It  is,  however,  a  dangerous  method,  if  not 
employed  with  the  greatest  care.  Seignobos 
makes  the  following  valuable  suggestions  con- 
cerning the  control  of  the  method: 

(1)  Never  mix  up  reasoning  with  the  analy- 
sis of  a  source;  (2)  never  confound  the  facts 
drawn  directly  from  the  sources  with  facts  ob- 
tained by  reasoning;  (3)  never  reason  unconsci- 
ously, but  mit  the  argument  into  logical  form 


98  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

and  the  fallacy  is  easily  detected;  (4)  if  there 
is  the  least  doubt  about  the  soundness  of  the 
reasoning,  draw  no  conclusions;  (5)  never  at- 
tempt to  turn  a  conjecture  (No.  4)  into  a  cer- 
tainty by  dwelling  upon  it.  Too  long  reflec- 
tion upon  a  few  sources  renders  the  conjecture 
familiar  and  at  last  plausible.  The  chances  are 
that  the  first  impression  is  correct. 

There  are  two  ways  of  employing  construc- 
tive reasoning:  negative  and  positive.  Nega- 
tive reasoning,  or  the  "argument  from  silence," 
has  already  been  dealt  with.  Positive  reason- 
ing: starts  with  a  fact  found  in  the  sources  and 

O 

infers  a  fact  not  found  there.  A  good  illustra- 
tion is  given  by  Bernheim;  we  find  in  a  certain 
document,  dated  May  10,  that  the  Bishop  of 
Wormes  signs  himself,  "  Wormatiensiselectus;" 
a  document,  dated  May  16,  bears  the  signature, 
"  Wormatiensis  episcopus."  From  these  facts 
we  infer  the  additional  facts,  that  between  the 
10th  and  16th  the  bishop  elect  was  consecrated. 
We  infer  more.  We  know  that  it  wras  custom- 
ary for  such  a  ceremony  to  fall  on  Sunday  or  a 
festival  day;  computation  shows  that  the  l^th 
was  Sunday,  and  we  infer  that  the  bishop  was 
confirmed  May  12. 

That  this  positive  reasoning  may  be  exact,  it 
is  necessary:  (1)  that  the  general  proposition 
should  be  exact,  that  is,  "the  two  facts  that  it 
assumes  to  be  bound  together  ought  to  be  of 
such  a  nature  that  the  first  is  never  found  with- 
out the  second;"  of  this  we  may  be  certain  only 
when  we  operate  with  detailed  propositions; 
(2)  "That  the  general  proposition  may  be  de- 
tailed, the  particular  historical  fact  must  itself 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  99 

be  known  in  detail."  The  conditions  of  reliable 
positive  construction  are  rarely  realized.  "We 
know  too  little  about  the  laws  of  social  life  and 
too  rarely  the  precise  details  of  an  historical 
fact." 

These  are  the  steps  in  the  synthetic  opera- 
tions that  are  included  in  the  group  to  which 
this  chapter  is  devoted.  Having  treated  the 
Imagining  of  the  Facts,  the  Grouping  of  the 
Facts,  and  Constructive  Reasoning,  I  shall  con- 
sider in  the  next  chapter  the  Environment  and 
the  Philosophy  of  History. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


SYNTHETIC  OPERATIONS:      ENVIRONMENT  AND 
THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  HISTORY. 

r  I  "*HERE  was  a  time,  and  that  not  long  ago, 
when  a  work  on  method  would  have  been 
complete  without  the  treatment  of  such 
questions  as  Environment  and  the  Philosophy 
of  History.  But  that  day  is  past.  The  histor- 
ian of  to-day  realizes  that  it  is  not  only  neces- 
sary to  consider  each  event  as  a  link  in  a  chain 
of  events — if  he  would  understand  the  particu- 
lar event — but  that  he  must  also  possess  a 
knowledge  of  the  physical,  psychical,  and  social 
conditions  that  form  the  environment  of  the 
events.  But  the  sciences  dealing  with  these 
conditions  are  in  a  formative  state  and  can 
furnish  only  scanty  assistance.  Anthropo- 
geography,  anthropology,  ethnology,  individual 
and  social  psychology,  and  sociology  will  trans- 
form historical  work  when  they  themselves 
have  reached  a  more  advanced  stage  of  develop- 
ment. Under  the  influence  of  these  sciences, 
synthetic  historical  work  will,  in  the  future, 
become  scientific  in  its  turn,  and  another  im- 
portant field  will  be  rescued  from  dilettanteism. 
The  influence  of  geography  upon  the  de- 
velopment of  society  is  recognized  by  histor- 
ians and,  as  a  rule,  every  history  of  a  people 
is  prefaced  by  a  chapter  upon  the  geography 
of  the  country.  But  this  a  rather  poor  make- 
shift. It  is  almost  equivalent  to  the  presents- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  101 

tion  of  crude  material  to  be  worked  over  by 
the  readers.  The  question  that  interests  the 
student  of  history  is  "  What  influence  did  the 
geography  of  the  country  have  upon  the  his- 
tory of  its  people?"  That  question  can  not 
be  answered  by  a  simple  description  of  the 
natural  features  of  the  country;  it  can  not  be 
answered  once  for  all  by  an  introductory  chap- 
ter. The  study  of  the  relation  of  man  to  his 
geographical  environment  must  go  hand  in 
hand  with  the  description  of  the  acts  that  were 
conditioned  by  that  environment. 

In  dealing  with  this  subject,  it  must  never  be 
forgotten  (1)  that  the  historic  races  did  not 
originate  in  the  environment  in  which  we  find 
them,  and  (2)  that  man  is  not  passive  clay  to  be 
moulded  by  his  physical  surroundings. 

No  attempt  should  be  made  to  explain  the 
brilliant  history  of  the  Greeks  from  the  geog- 
raphy of  Greece  alone.  There  is  no  way  of  de- 
termining how  long  the  Greeks  had  been  in 
Greece  previous  to  the  recorded  beginnings  of 
their  history.  It  is  very  certain,  however, 
that  when  they  migrated  to  this  country  the 
people  bore  with  them  tribal  characteristics,  in- 
herited from  ancestors,  who  had  been  for  thou- 
sands of  years  subject  to  natural  influences  in 
other  places.  How  much,  then,  that  we  find  in 
Greek  character  is  due  to  the  environment  in 
Greece  and  how  much  to  the  earlier  environ- 
ment of  the  ancestors  of  the  Greeks,  we  shall 
never  be  able  to  determine.  Suppose,  for  an  in- 
stant, that  the  records  that  made  it  possible  to 
explain  the  presence  of  the  negroes  in  our  south- 


102  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

era  states  were  lost.  What  success  would  the 
historian  have  that  attempted  to  explain  the 
characteristics  of  these  people  froni  the  en- 
vironment in  which  they  find  themselves  to-day? 

Human  beings,  moreover,  are  not  like  chem- 
ical atoms;  the  same  external  causes,  acting  on 
different  human  aggregates  produce  unlike 
effects.  To  one  people,  a  sea  would  be  a  bar- 
rier; to  another,  it  is  the  threshold  to  a  new 
world.  The  character  of  a  people  must,  then, 
be  always  counted  with.  Certain  natural  con- 
ditions are  capable  of  producing  such  and  such 
effects  if  the  right  people  is  brought  into  con- 
tact with  them.  This  power  of  reaction  differs 
not  only  from  people  to  people  but  in  the  same 
people  from  time  to  time.  How  unwise  it  is  to 
attribute  too  great  an  influence  to  natural  en- 
vironment is  nowhere  better  illustrated  than  in 
the  history  of  Greece.  The  same  sea  and  sky, 
the  same  mountains  and  transparent  atmos- 
phere, but  how  different  the  results  to-day  1  If 
the  physical  environment  of  the  Greek  has  not 
changed,  the  social  environment  certainly  has. 

One  of  the  common  fallacies  encountered  in 
the  consideration  of  this  matter  of  the  relation 
of  geography  to  the  evolution  of  man  in  soci- 
ety is  the  belief  that  man  emancipates  himself 
by  degrees  from  the  influence  of  his  physical 
environment.  According  to  this  theory,  the 
barbarian  is  more  dependent  upon  nature  than 
the  man  of  civilization.  This  statement  of  the 
case  does  not  make  clear  the  true  situation. 
The  savage  is  bound  to  nature  by  few  and  slen- 
der bonds;  the  civilized  man  by  many  and 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  103 

strong  bonds.  The  latter  makes  more  use  of 
nature  than  the  former.  He  has  a  greater  va- 
riety of  resources;  when  one  fails  him  the 
others  serve  him.  The  farmer  who  plants  but 
a  single  crop  and  sees  it  perish  from  lack  of 
moisture  is  no  less  dependent  upon  nature  than 
the  savage,  who,  living  from  the  natural  rice 
of  the  swamp,  is  driven  to  the  verge  of  starva- 
tion by  the  first  wind  that  strips  the  plants. 

These  two  limitations  made,  it  is  certain  that 
geographical  environment  plays  a  vastly  im- 
portant role  in  human  history.  It  affects  both 
the  conditions  and  the  acts  of  men.  It  affects 
their  bodies  through  climate  and  their  minds 
through  startling  natural  phenomena.  It  im- 
pels men  of  the  North  to  the  warm  lands  of  the 
South  and  controls  the  direction  of  the  move- 
ment by  river  valleys  (natural  highways)  or 
checks  it  by  high  mountains.  It  makes  im- 
possible the  development  of  a  high  civilization 
upon  islands  of  the  ocean  (lack  of  space);  it 
enriches  and  develops  science  by  the  struggle 
with  nature,  dictates  man's  clothing  and  even 
his  social  organization  (social  and  political  di- 
vision of  the  inhabitants  of  a  desert).  All  of 
these  things  are  not  history,  but  they  make 
history  intelligible.  For  however  great  the 
psychical  development  of  man  may  be  in  the 
future,  it  will  always  rest  upon  a  physical 
foundation,  and  this  physical  side  must  inevita- 
bly link  him  to  his  geographical  environment. 

But  if  the  historian  turns  on  the  one  side  to 
the  geographer  for  aid,  he  tarns  on  the  other 
to  the  psychologist.  Historical  acts  are  noth- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

ing  else  than  the  "expression  of  human  feel- 
ing, conceiving  and  willing,  the  activities  of 
that  psychophysical  unit  that  we  call  the  soul 
or  the  mind."  Simmel  (Die  Probleme  der 
Geschitsphilosophie,  Berlin,  1892,  p.  33)  calls 
psychology  the  "  apriori  of  historical  science." 
It  is  clearly  important,  then,  that  the  historian 
should  understand  something  about  the  psychi- 
cal conditions  under  which  the  individual  or 
society — in  part  or  in  whole — act.  Not  that 
such  general  knowledge  will  enable  him  to  de- 
termine what  particular  psychological  fact  hap- 
pened at  a  given  time  and  place,  but  that  he 
will  be  able  to  tell  what  psychological  facts 
could  not  have  taken  place  under  given  condi- 
tions and  he  will  be  helped  in  the  interpreta- 
ti6n  of  the  facts. 

The  common  use  of  collective  terms  such  as 
the  state,  the  church,  society,  culture,  corpora- 
tions has  tended  to  obscure  the  fact  that  all 
historical  acts  are  the  result  of  the  feeling, 
conceiving,  and  willing,  of  individuals.  How- 
ever important  social  psychology  may  be  it 
should  never  lead  us  to  undervalue  the  impor- 
tance for  the  historian  of  a  knowledge  of  the 
psychology  of  the  individual. 

Such  knowledge  has  always  been  possessed 
and  applied,  in  some  degree,  by  historians.  It 
was,  however,  "an  instinctive  knowledge  of 
the  universal  identity  of  human  feeling,  think- 
ing, and  willing,"  that  the  ordinary  man  makes 
use  of  in  his  attempts  to  understand  the  acts  of 
others;  and  furthermore  an  empirical  knowl- 
edge of  their  own  mental  life,  combined  with 


HISTORICAL    METHOD.  105 

the  empirical  knowledge  of  the  soul  life  of  oth- 
ers drawn  from  reading  and  experience. 

This  knowledge  was  employed,  for  the  most 
part,  in  supplying  motives  for  acts  when  these 
motives  were  not  given  by  tradition.  Such 
work  is  most  difficult.  Its  successful  accom- 
plishment depends  upon  the  ability  to  put 
one's  self  in  the  place  of  the  historical  person- 
age and  to  feel  and  think  as  he  felt  and  thought. 
The  fact  that  like  outward  acts  are  often  due 
to  different  inward  motives  renders  the  attempt 
to  infer  these  motives  a  very  delicate  operation. 
Robespierre  favored  the  Hebertists  and  they 
attached  themselves  to  him.  An  Italian  noble- 
man had  his  enemies  in  his  power  and  instead 
of  destroying  them  he  dismissed  them  with 
gifts;  they  felt  insulted  and  planned  to  take 
his  life. 

But  the  empirical  knowledge  of  psycholog- 
ical conditions  should  be  widened  and  deepened 
by  the  scientific  study  of  the  mind,  and  not  by 
the  study  of  the  sound  mind  only,  but  also  of 
the  diseased  mind.  The  whole  attitude  toward 
certain  classes  of  phenomena,  such  as  religious 
exaltation  and  hallucinations,  has  been  changed 
by  psychical  research.  All  the  historical  proc- 
esses of  interpretation,  combination,  and  repro- 
duction are  conditioned  by  mental  laws  and  the 
study  of  these  processes  can  never  lead  to  the 
best  results  if  the  laws  are  not  taken  into 
account. 

It  has  been  shown  in  a  previous  chapter  that 
the  work  of  interpretation  and  combination  not 
only  calls  for  a  knowledge  of  the  individual 


106  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

psychical,  but  also  of  the  social-psychical  con- 
ditions, or  the  conditions  of  mind  having  their 
roots  in  the  relations  of  men  with  one  another. 
Whether  we  look  upon  these  conditions  as  the 
manifestations  of  a  social  mind  (Volksgeist) 
matters  little;  the  important  thing  is  that  the 
living  together  of  men  in  society  produces  re- 
sults that  are  not  simply  the  mechanical  total  of 
individual  sensations  and  thoughts;  there  is  an 
additional  something  characteristic  of  the  whole. 
No  better  illustration  can  be  given  than  the 
language  of  a  people.  It  is  a  product  of  the 
social  spirit.  All  have  contributed  to  its 
growth,  some  consciously,  others  unconsciously, 
hut  of  all  it  may  be  said  "Waser  webt,  das 
weiss  kein  Weber"  (The  weaver  knows  not 
what  he  weaves. )  The  national  consciousness, 
although  it  exists  only  in  the  sensations  and 
conceptions  of  individuals,  yet  constitutes  a 
peculiar  whole  and  exercises  a  peculiar  influ- 
ence. The  consciousness  that  the  same  general 
conception  of  the  fatherland  lives  in  the  minds 
of  millions  of  other  men  and  women  preserves 
and  even,  increases  the  patriotism  of  the  indi- 
vidual. Since,  then,  social  relations  call  forth 
peculiar  psychical  effects,  these  effects  may  rea- 
sonably constitute  matter  for  investigation  and 
the  field  may  be  set  aside  under  the  head  of 
social  psychology. 

Although  the  science  has  been  born  it  is  still 
an  infant.  So  little  has  been  accomplished 
that  the  historian  is  obliged  to  do  for  himself 
the  work  that  will  be  done  in  the  future  by  an 
auxiliary  science.  Through  his  own  investiga- 


HISTORICAL   METHOD.  107 

tions,  he  must  win  for  himself  the  necessary 
knowledge  of  the  social-psychical  conditions. 
He  must  appreciate  the  distinctions  of  time  and 
locality  when  dealing  with  the  past.  Difficult 
as  it  is  to  appreciate  justly  the  social-psychical 
conditions  of  contemporaries  who  may  be  di- 
rectly observed — like  the  French,  Germans, 
and  Italians — it  becomes  infinitely  more  diffi- 
cult to  deal  successfully  with  past  ages  that  can 
be  studied  only  indirectly  through  the  sources. 

Only  through  a  knowledge  of  the  social- 
psychical  conditions  can  the  historian  determine 
what  is  peculiar  to  the  individual  and  what  the 
common  property  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived. 
Who  would  undertake  to  speak  with  authority 
of  the  work  of  a  great  artist  without  having 
first  acquainted  himself  with  the  condition  of 
that  particular  art  in  the  age  in  which  the  artist 
lived?  There  is  no  commandment  of  good  his- 
torical work  that  is  more  frequently  violated 
than  the  commandment  that  the  writer  shall  ac- 
quaint himself  with  the  spirit  of  the  age  in 
which  the  events  that  he  would  narrate  took 
place.  And  what  wonder?  The  man  who  un- 
dertakes to  familiarize  himself  with  the  social- 
psychical  conditions  before  describing  the 
events  that  were  conditioned  by  them  often  finds 
that  life  is  too  short  for  the  completion  of  his 
task. 

A  knowledge  of  the  geographical,  the  indi- 
vidual-psychical and  social- psychical  conditions 
is  not  all  that  constitutes  an  acquaintance  with 
man's  environment.  Every  individual  born  into 
an  advanced  society  finds  himself  surrounded 


108  HISTORICAL  METHOD. 

by  the  vast  accumulations  inherited  from  past 
ages.  Probably  the  great  superiority  of  the 
civilized  man  over  the  savage  is  due  in  a  very 
large  degree  to  this  fact.  Imagine  the  child  of 
cultured  parents  transferred  immediately  after 
birth  to  the  care  of  African  negroes  and  reared 
in  their  midst.  A  little  reflection  will  show  that 
the  wide  chasm  between  his  real  life  and  the  life 
that  he  might  have  led  was  due  to  the  absence 
of  culture  accumulations  among  the  Africans. 
How  great  a  blunder  Buckle  committed  in  fail- 
ing to  take  into  account  the  culture  conditions 
can  be  readily  seen.  While  it  is  true  that  the 
culture  products  are  the  results  of  historical 
events,  they  should,  nevertheless,  be  treated  as 
independent  factors  in  all  historical  problems, 
because  no  historical  development  has  ever 
taken  place  that  has  not  been  influenced  by 
some  existing  culture  conditions. 

These  culture  conditions  act,  for  the  most 
part,  almost  like  geographical  conditions,  since 
they  are  not  subject  to  important  changes 
through  the  arbitrary  acts  of  individuals  or  of 
particular  generations.  Some,  it  is  true,  are 
more  changeable  than  others.  The  constitu- 
tion of  a  state  is  more  easily  changed  than  the 
language  of  the  people.  The  culture  condi- 
tions, moreover,  do  not  influence  all  alike. 
"The  sun  shines  equally  upon  the  just  and  the 
unjust,  the  educated  and  the  ignorant,  the  rich 
and  the  poor;"  the  literature  of  a  people  exerts 
a  powerful  influence  upon  a  few,  a  slight  in- 
fluence upon  many.  Then  again  the  influence 
of  all  the  culture  products  is  not  the  same. 


HISTORICAL,   METHOD.  109 

The  form  of  the  state  affects  all  in  much  the 
same  manner,  while  the  influence  of  language, 
art,  and  science  differs  from  individual  to  indi- 
vidual and  from  group  to  group. 

The  consideration  of  the  culture  conditions 
has  been  neglected  in  the  past  together  with  the 
other  elements  of  the  environment.  In  certain 
epochs  their  influence  has  been  so  great  that  the 
historian  could  not  fail  to  count  with  them. 
But  the  treatment  of  economic  conditions  in 
connection  with  the  French  Revolution,  of  art 
in  the  Age  of  Pericles,  of  literature  in  the  per- 
iod of  the  Renaissance  and  of  religion  in  the  per- 
iod of  the  Reformation  does  not  satisfy  the  just 
demands  of  this  element  in  the  environmenf. 
The  ideal  of  the  historian — perhaps  an  impos- 
sible ideal  —must  be  to  consider  the  culture 
conditions  as  acting  continuously  and  regularly, 
not  spasmodically,  upon  the  historical  evolu- 
tion, and  to  trace  their  influence  not  only  upon 
the  events  but  their  mutual  influence  on  each 
other. 

Such  are  the  elements  of  the  environment  in 
which  the  historical  events  take  place.  With 
this  environment  the  historian  must  acquaint 
himself  and  under  the  influence  of  it  his  nar- 
rative must  be  written.  The  labor  of  the  great 
historians  can  be  appreciated  only  by  those 
who  realize  how  much  time  must  be  given  to 
the  simple  effort  to  reach  a  point  of  vantage 
from  which  the  event  may*  be  seen  in  its  true 
light. 

From  the  historical  environment  the  step  is 
but  a  short  one  to  the  philosophy  of  history. 


110  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

It  should  be  noted  first  of  all  that  there  is  a  dis- 
tinct difference  between  philosophical  history — 
a  narrative  with  philosophical  reflections — and 
the  philosophy  of  history.  The  first  may  con- 
tain a  sweeping,  comprehensive  view  of  uni- 
versal history,  but  so  long  as  it  retains  its 
descriptive  character  it  falls  short  of  the  phil- 
osophy of  history.  For  the  philosophy  of 
history  deals  not  with  the  description  of  histor- 
ical events,  but  with  the  consideration  of  the 
universal  and  fundamental  conditions  and  pro- 
cesses upon  which  the  historical  development 
rests.  If  the  historical  events  are  introduced  at 
all,  it  should  be  simply  as  illustrative  material. 

The  content  of  the  philosophy  of  history  con- 
sists of  a  distinct  group  of  problems,  and  these 
problems  must  evidently  have  to  do  with  his- 
tory or  the  evolution  of  man  in  society.  But 
what  are  these  problems?  An  examination  of 
the  history  of  the  philosophy  of  history  from 
Augustine  to  Lotze  makes  clear  that  all  the 
problems  that  have  presented  themselves  may 
be  grouped  under  two  main  heads:  (1)  How  is 
the  historical  evolution  brought  about  ?  and  (2) 
What  are  the  results  and  what  the  significance 
of  the  historical  evolution?  In  other  words,  it 
is  the  business  of  the  philosophy  of  history  to 
investigate  the  factors  of  historical  evolution 
and  the  value  of  the  results  of  the  evolution. 

The  analysis  of  the  factors  leads  to  the  three 
groups  of  general  conditions  that  have  already 
been  treated.  The  relation  of  these  factors  to 
one  another  and  to  the  historical  evolution 
must,  if  possible,  be  determined.  In  the  fur- 


HISTORICAL,   METHOD.  Ill 

ther  analysis  of  the  factors,  a  new  set  of  prob- 
lems presents  itself.  Is  this  psychical  be- 
ing, the  individual  of  history,  a  free  being? 
Can  any  freedom  of  the  will  exist  in  a  society 
where  evolution  is  controlled  by  natural  law? 
Is  this  belief  in  the  freedom  of  the  will  simply 
self  deception  and  is  the  individual  absolutely 
dependent  upon  external  powers  or  forces? 
And  here  we  rise  to  the  problem  of  problems. 
What  is  the  motive  force  in  all  history?  Is  it 
the  struggle  between  good  and  evil  that  has 
been  going  on  since  the  fall  of  man  and  will 
continue  until  the  last  judgment?  (So  thought 
the  philosophers  of  the  Middle  Ages.)  Is  it  the 
hand  of  a  personal  God,  who  by  rewards  and 
punishment  leads  man  on  to  ever  higher  desti- 
nies? Or  is  it  the  divine  idea  that  has  been 
placed  in  the  germ  in  the  soul  of  man,  to  be  de- 
veloped organically  in  history  ?  Is  it  the  man- 
ifestation of  the  God  idea  itself?  Is  history 
simply  the  unfolding  of  the  immanent  world- 
spirit?  Are  the  natural  laws  only  the  form  in 
which  the- inner,  spontaneous  will  impulses  out- 
wardly realize  themselves?  Do  natural  laws 
alone  control  history  ?  Or  is  it  all  accident  ? 

These  problems  concerning  the  factors  of 
evolution  lead  naturally  to  the  problems  deal- 
ing with  the  value  of  the  results  of  evolution. 
Can  we  prove  that  one  of  the  results  has  been 
the  perfecting  of  man  and  the  improving  of  his 
condition?  If  so,  has  this  progress  been  regu- 
lar and  universal?  Have  all  the  social  ele- 
ments been  equally  active  and  equally  de- 
veloped, or  has  the  evolution  been  onesided? 


112  HISTORICAL    METHOD. 

Are  all  the  elements  capable  of  participating 
in  progress,  the  moral  and  artistic  equally  with 
the  intellectual  ?  Are  all  peoples  called  to  take 
part  in  this  progress  or  are  there  a  chosen  few  ? 
Can  we  even  say  that  only  certain  classes  in 
certain  peoples  are  the  sharers  of  this  culture  ? 
Finally,  what  is  the  measure  of  progress  or  of 
regress  ? 

The  problems  of  the  factors  and  values  stated 
above  have  been  answered  again  and  again  but 
no  satisfactory  solution,  no  solution  that  does 
justice  to  all  the  conditions  of  the  problem,  has 
yet  been  presented.  Many  of  the  failures,  up 
to  the  present  time,  have  been  due  to  bad 
method.  The  most  of  the  work  has  been  done 
by  men  defective  in  historical  training,  who 
have  not  hesitated  to  do  violence  to  the  facts  in 
order  to  justify  their  theories.  The  philosophy 
of  history  in  the  future  must  rest  on  the  science 
of  history  and  grow  out  of  it.  It  will  develop 
as  our  knowledge  of  history  develops  and  its 
aim  will  be  to  comprehend  historical  facts  as 
regarded  from  the  most  universal  point  of 
view,  that  of  general  human  evolution,  that  of 
humanity  itself. 


CHAPTER  X. 


SYNTHETIC  OPERATIONS:      EXPOSITION. 

IN  the  preceding  chapters,  I  have  described 
the  process  by  which  an  historian  discov- 
ers the  source  material  related  to  his  sub- 
ject and  obtains  the  use  of  it;  I  have  explained 
the  critical  examination  to  which  the  material, 
when  found,  must  be  submitted  to  determine 
its  genuineness,  to  localize,  and  to  analyze  it; 
I  have  indicated  the  method  for  determining 
the  value  of  the  sources  admitted  as  evidence 
and  for  establishing  the  facts  contained  in  the 
sources;  finally,  I  have  shown  -how  the  facts 
must  be  imagined  and  grouped,  the  gaps  in  the 
evidence  filled  in  by  constructive  reasoning,  the 
physica1,  psychical,  and  social  environment  con- 
structed and  the  factors  and  processes  of  his- 
to^rical  development  (philosophy  of  history)  be 
understood. 

It  remains  for  the  historian  to  communicate 
to  others  the  results  of  his  research.  This  last 
topic  is  treated  by  Bernheim  under  the  head 
Darstellung  and  by  Seignobos  in  the  two  chap- 
ters entitled  Construction  des  formules  g&n&rales 
and  Exposition.  In  his  two  chapters,  Seignobos 
really  treats  more  topics  than  are  embraced  in 
Bernheim's  Darstellung.  The  first  chapter 
deals  with  the  subject  matter  of  Darstellung 
and  adds  a  few  words  on  the  philosophy  of 
history;  the  chapter  on  Exposition  is  devoted 

8 


HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

to  the  question  of  scientific  form  in  the  narra- 
tive and  is  not  treated  by  Bernheim. 

The  problem  of  Exposition  or  Darstellung 
is  by  no  means  simply  a  question  of  style, 
although,  as  Seignobos  says,  "  il  n'y  a  pas 
d'historien  complet  sans  une  "bonne  langue," 
and  the  reason  is  that  "  pour  atteindre  des  faits 
aussi  f uyants  que  les  faits  sociaux,  une  langue 
ferine  et  precise  est  un  instrument  indispens- 
able." But  the  need  of  a  good  command  of 
language,  of  a  power  to  use  exact,  scientific  ex- 
pressions in  dealing  with  facts  as  elusive  as 
social  facts,  is  not  the  topic  to  be  emphasized  in 
this  chapter;  we  have  to  do  here  with  a  question 
of  a  more  difficult  nature,  namely,  how  may  the 
results  of  the  investigation  be  communicated, 
in  as  correct  a  manner  as  possible,  to  others? 

Not  all  the  results  can  be  communicated. 
However  limited  the  topic  of  investigation,  not 
all  the  results  of  that  investigation  can  possibly 
he  presented  in  all  their  fullness  of  detail.  An 
historian  who  attempted  to  communicate  all 
the  facts  that  he  h  id  found  concerning  the  life 
of  Napoleon  would  never  find  readers.  It  is 
a  practical  question.  Obliged  to  choose  be- 
tween "being  complete  and  unknowable  or  of 
being  knowable  and  incomplete,"  historical 
synthesis  naturally  decided  in  favor  of  the 
latter. 

If  not  all  the  results  of  the  investigation  can 
be  communicated,  it  follows  that  there  must  be 
condensation  and  this  condensation  must  be 
performed  in  such  a  manner  that  the  narrative 
will,  as  far  as  possible,  correspond  to  the  re- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  115 

ality  as  it  appeared  to  the  investigator.  The 
relation  of  the  narrative  to  the  mass  of  con- 
ceptions contained  in  the  views  of  the  man 
who  has  seen  the  evidence  first-hand  has  been 
compared  by  Bernheim  to  the  relation  of  the 
piano  arrangement  of  a  great  orchestral  work 
to  the  work  itself.  The  idea  is  easily  grasped; 
the  execution  of  the  idea  is  unusually  difficult. 
To  condense,  to  omit  unimportant  details,  to 
retain  the  right  proportions  in  the  condensed 
material,  is  a  thing  calling  for  an  infinite  amount 
of  skill. 

The  selection  of  the  material  must  depend 
upon  the  theme.  Details  omitted  from  a  uni- 
versal history  would  find  place  in  the  history 
of  a  state,  of  a  province,  or  of  an  individual. 
In  a  church  history,  one  kind  of  material  would 
be  emphasized,  in  an  industrial  history  another. 
A  good  historian  may  learn  much  in  the  matter 
of  composition  from  the  artist,  for  the  good 
historical  narrative  is  characterized  by  boldness 
of  execution  and  subordination  of  details. 

The  most  helpful  thing  that  has  yet  been 
written  on  condensation  is  Seignobos'  excellent 
chapter  entitled  Constriction  des  formules  gene- 
rales.  "History,"  he  writes,  "to  become  a 
science,  must  elaborate  th§  raw  material  found 
in  the  facts.  It  should  condense  the  facts  into 
descriptive  formulae,  both  qualitative  and  quan- 
titative. It  should  search  for  the  relations  be- 
tween the  facts,  relations  that  form  the  last  con- 
clusion of  every  veritable  science."  Historical 
facts,  human  facts  can  not  be  reduced  to  a  few 
simple  formulae  like  chemical  formulae,  but 


116  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

"  history,  as  well  as  all  sciences  of  life,  has  need 
of  descriptive  formulae  to  express  the  character 
of  the  different  phenomena."  The  formula 
should  be  short  that  it  may  be  manageable; 
precise,  that  it  may  give  an  exact  idea  of  the 
fact.  Yet  brevity  and  precision  conflict.  To 
obtain  brevity,  we  must  eliminate  details,  while 
characteristic  details  alone  give  precise  knowl- 
edge of  human  events.  A  compromise  is  nec- 
essary; all  that  is  not  strictly  necessary  must 
be  suppressed,  but  the  work  of  suppression 
must  cease  when  it  leads  to  the  sacrifice  of  char- 
acteristic traits.  If  the  demands  of  precision 
are  lost  sight  of,  "all  history  is  reduced  to  a 
mass  of  vague  generalities,  uniform  for  all  time, 
with  the  exception  of  some  proper  names  and 
dates." 

In  constructing  these  formulae  one  would  do 
well  to  "employ  as  often  as  possible  concrete 
and  descriptive  terms;  their  meaning  is  always 
clear."  That  is  to  say,  "collective  groups 
should  be  described  by  collective  names  and 
not  by  abstract  substantives  (as  monarchy, 
state,  democracy,  reformation,  revolution)." 
When  a  word  or  a  group  of  words  constituting 
a  formula  is  employed,  there  should  be  no  un- 
certainty as  to  the  meaning  that  attaches  to 
them.  What  different  meanings  attach  to  the 
wjrd  monarch  when  applied  to  Clovis,  Louis 
XL,  Louis  XIV.,  Louis  XVL,  and  Louis 
Philip!  This  misunderstanding  may  be  avoided 
by  a  description  of  the  term  when  first  used. 
Such  a  device  may  mar  the  artistic  unity  of  the 
narrative,  but  the  historian  is  primarily  a  scieu- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  117 

list  and  only  secondarily  an  artist.  Belloc's 
"Danton"  (1899)  is  a  good  illustration  of  the 
compulsion  that  the  historian  feels  to  make  his 
general  terms  convey  a  precise  meaning.  Tac- 
itus would  have  won  the  eternal  gratitude 
of  students  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  he  but  in- 
dicated the  meaning  that  attached  to  abstract 
Latin  substantives  when  used  to  describe  prim- 
itive German  life. 

After  dividing  his  formulae  into  two  classes, 
qualitative  and  quantitative,  Seignobos  subdi- 
vides his  qualitative  formulae  into  (1)  those 
descriptive  of  general  facts  ( habits  and  evolu- 
tions) and  (2)  unique  facts  (events). 

u  General  facts  consist  of  acts  often  repeated 
and  common  to  many  men.  Their  character, 
extent,  and  duration  must  be  determined." 

To  determine  the  character,  the  common 
traits  of  a  usage  or  institution  are  drawn  from 
many  individual  cases  and  expressed  in  a  for- 
mula; the  individual  variations  are  neglected. 
Serfdom  in  a  certain  period  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  city  life  of  a  like  period,  might  be  treated 
in  this  way.  If  the  usage  is  that  of  language, 
laws,  regulations,  etc. ,  it  should  never  be  for- 
gotten that  formulae  of  this  kind  express  only  su- 
perficial facts;  "in  language  the  written  words, 
not  the  pronunciation;  in  religion,  the  dogmas 
and  official  rites,  not  the  real  beliefs  of  the  mass 
of  the  people.  *  *  In  all  of  these  cases 
the  knowledge  of  conventional  formulae  should 
be  supplemented  some  day  by  a  study  of  the 
real  habits." 

To  determine  the  extent  of  a  habit,  one  de- 


118  HISTORICAL  METHOD 

termines  the  area  of  its  distribution  and  the 
point  where  it  is  most  practiced;  for  its  dura- 
tion, the  time  of  its  first  and  last  appearance 
and  the  epoch  of  its  greatest  activity  must  be 
noted. 

In  the  case  of  unique  facts  many  can  not  be 
united  under  the  same  formula,  and  it  is  neces- 
sary to  decide  what  facts  shall  be  sacrificed. 
Personal  taste  should  not  determine  the  choice 
of  facts  to  be  retained.  There  is  but  one  stand- 
ard that  may  be  employed,  and  that  is  the  role 
played  by  the  fact  in  human  affairs.  "  Persons 
and  events  that  have  clearly  influenced  the 
march  of  evolution  must  be  preserved.  The 
mark  by  which  one  recognizes  them  is  that  the 
evolution  could  not  be  described  without  mak- 
ing mention  of  them." 

In  constructing  the  formula  for  an  individual 
we  must  draw  our  traits  from  his  biography 
and  habits;  from  his  biography  we  learn  the 
physiological,  educational,  and  social  influences 
under  which  he  lived;  from  his  habits  we  form 
an  idea  of  his  conception  of  life,  his  dominant 
tastes,  his  habitual  actions,  and  his  rules  of  con- 
duct. From  all  these  details,  we  form  a  portrait 
or  formula  of  the  individual. 

To  construct  the  formula  for  an  event,  we 
must  fix  its  character  and  extent.  The  charac- 
ter consists  of  the  traits  that  distinguish  this 
event  from  all  others.  The  formula  should 
contain  the  following  points:  one  or  more  indi- 
viduals, impelled  by  certain  motives,  working 
in  the  midst  of  ceria'n  material  conditions  (lo- 


HISTORICAL  METHOD.  119 

cality,  instruments),  performed  certain  acts, 
and  the  acts  produced  a  certain  modification 
of  society.  The  extent  of  the  event  should 
show  the  region  where  it  occurred  and  that  af- 
fected by  it,  together  with  the  moment  when 
the  action  began  and  that  when  it  was  finished. 

The  formulae  of  quality  should  be  supple- 
mented by  those  of  quantity.  The  five  methods 
employed  in  formulating  quantity  as  given  by 
Seignobos  are  (1)  measurement  (psychological 
facts  can  not  be  measured),  (2)  enumeration, 
(3)  evaluation,  (4)  sampling,  (5)  generalization. 
They  decrease  in  exactness  from  the  first  to  the 
last. 

There  are  certain  dangers  to  be  guarded 
against  in  the  employment  of  each  method. 

In  the  second,  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
method  of  statistics  applies  to  facts  that  have 
in  common  a  definite  character  of  which  use  is 
made  that  the  facts  may  be  counted.  These 
facts,  however,  are  not  homogeneous  and  may 
have  but  one  thing  in  common  (crimes,  suicides, 
workmen,  strikes).  The  danger  is  that  the 
statistician  may  believe  that  he  has  described  the 
the  facts  with  scientific  precision,  when  he  has 
only  counted  them. 

Evaluation  is  an  enumeration  covering  a  por- 
tion of  the  field  and  based  upon  the  assumption 
that  the  same  proportion  holds  good  in  the  rest 
of  the  field  of  investigation.  The  results  are 
unreliable  if  it  is  not  known  that  the  portion 
examined  is  exactly  similar  to  the  other  por 
tions  of  the  field. 


120  HISTORICAL   METHOD. 

"Sampling,"  that  consists  in  making  an  enu- 
meration of  units  taken  from  different  portions 
of  the  field  of  investigation,  is  of  value  when 
the  samples  are  representative  of  the  whole. 
They  should  be  taken  from  very  different 
points  and  from  groups  living  under  very  dif- 
ferent conditions,  that  the  exceptions  may  bal- 
ance one  another. 

"  Generalization  is  only  an  instinctive  method 
of  simplification."  It  is  unconsciously  applied 
in  dealing  with  all  complex  human  events.  It  is 
an  unconscious  "sampling."  It  may  be  ren- 
dered correct  by  submitting  it  to  the  conditions 
of  "sampling."  To  generalize  correctly  one 
must  (1)  indicate  the  field  of  generalization 
(country,  group,  class,  epoch);  (2)  be  sure  that 
all  the  facts  generalized  upon  are  similar  in  all 
the  points  concerned;  (3)  be  certain  that  the 
cases  selected  are  types,  and  (4)  take  care  that 
the  cases  considered  are  more  numerous  as 
the  points  of  resemblance  are  less  numerous. 

The  descriptive  formulae,  qualitative  and 
quantitative,  do  not  represent  the  last  stage  of 
the  synthetic  operations.  Still  larger  groups, 
more  general  formulae  must  be  constructed. 
In  forming  groups  more  and  more  general,  the 
procedure  is  the  same  as  that  described  above. 
At  each  step  in  advance  some  of  the  character- 
istics of  the  smaller  groups  are  dropped  until 
at  last  only  universal  human  characteristics  re- 
main. In  this  manner,  the  formulae  for  a  lan- 
guage, a  religion,  a  society,  or  an  event  are 
constructed.  When  this  condensation  can  be 
carried  no  f urther,  the  attempt  may  be  made  to 


HISTORICAL    MKTHOD.  121 

classify  the  groups  by  comparison.  The  two 
methods  of  classification  suggested  by  Seig- 
nobos  are  (1)  comparison  of  similar  categories 
of  special  facts,  such  as  languages,  religions, 
and  arts,  and  (2)  comparison  of  "real  groups  of 
real  individuals. "  The  first  is  "  an  abstract  classi- 
fication that  isolates  one  species  of  facts  from 
all  others;"  the  second  is  "a  concrete  classifi- 
cation similar. to  the  classifications  in  zoology, 
when  not  the  functions  but  the  animal  forms 
are  classified."  The  difficulty  with  this  last 
classification  is  due  to  the  disagreement  as  to 
the  characters  that  should  constitute  the  basis 
of  resemblance:  shall  they  be  political,  eco- 
nomic, intellectual,  or  religious?  Upon  this 
point  no  agreement  has  been  reached. 

The  problem  of  problems  still  remains  un- 
solved: How  to  classify  all  of  the  groups  or 
formulae  and  thus  construct  a  grand  ensemble 
embracing  all  human  society.  Some  historians 
say  that  it  is  impossible,  but  it  continues  to  be 
an  ideal  worth  striving  for.  It  is  clear  that 
these  groups  are  not  isolated  in  reality  and 
that  a  change  in  one  brings  about  a  change  in 
the  others.  If  there  is  unity  (Zusammenhang), 
it  will  be  possible  in  time  to  construct  the  for- 
mula for  this  unity. 

Having  formulated  the  results  of  the  investi- 
gation it  simply  remains  for  the  historian  to 
commit  these  formulae  to  paper.  Here  we 
touch  one  of  the  weak  points  in  historical 
work.  The  fact  that  the  writing  of  history 
has  so  often  been  left  to  men  with  no  scientific 
training,  men  whose  main  purpose  was  to  write 


122  HISTORICAL    METHOD. 

to  entertain,  and  who  repeatedly  sacrificed  the 
truth  in  their  effort  to  please — sacrificed  the 
truth  because  it  was  commonplace  and  unat- 
tractive— this  fact  has  made  it  difficult  for  the 
historical  narrative  to  take  on  a  scientific  form. 
I  has  been  said  too  often  that  u  historical 
work  should  be  a  work  of  art.  The  thing  may 
be  absolutely  impossible.  The  completeness 
and  attractiveness  of  the  work  depend  upon 
the  quantity  of  the  sources  and  the  character  of 
the  sources.  Both  of  these  things  are  beyond 
the  control  of  the  investigator.  The  first  de- 
mand made  upon  the  historian  is  to  tell  the 
truth,  to  tell  us  exactly  what  he  knows  and 
what  he-  does  not  know.  If  there  are  any  gaps 
in  the  evidence,  it  is  his  business  to  point  them 
out.  We  should  remember  that  he  is  not  an  in- 
fallible authority  speaking  from  inspiration,  but 
just  a  plain  fallible  man  who  should  be  required 
to  prove  every  statement  that  he  makes. 

The  demand  for  proof  is  not  made  by  the 
general  public;  it  must  be  made  by  the  body  of 
historical  students.  W  hat  right  have  untrained 
men,  who  have  not  mastered  the  subject  of 
which  they  speak,  what  moral  right  have  these 
men  to  publish  histories  for  the  education  of 
the  multitude?  None  whatever.  It  is  simply 
a  business  proposition.  These  popular  his- 
tories in  four  or  five  large  volumes  are  the  dime 
novels  of  historical  literature.  It  should  be  the 
business  of  teachers  and  writers  of  history  to 
put  an  end  to  the  existence  of  such  works  by 
creating  a  taste  for  something  better.  This 
work  may  be  done  in  two  ways:  (1)  by  prepar- 


HISTORICAL    METHOD.  123 

ing  histories  that  are  at  the  same  time  popular 
and  sound  (Adams'  Civilization  of  the  Middle 
Ages),  (2)  by  training  in  historical  study  in  the 
schools.  The  teachers  of  history  must  be  stu- 
dents of  history,  and  the  bovs  and  girls  must 
be  taught  what  proof  is  in  history  just  as  they 
are  taught  what  proof  is  in  mathematics  and 
the  other  sciences.  Having  learned  what  histor- 
ical proof  is  they  must  be  trained  to  give  it 
themselves  and  to  demand  it  of  others. 

The  historical  narrative  must,  then,  take  on 
a  scientific  form  when  it  is  written  for  students. 
The  sources  of  information  must  be  indicated 
and  evidence  exactly  cited  in  support  of  gen- 
eral statements.  The  writer  must  do  his  work 
in  such  a  way'  that  the  reader  may  be  able 
to  control  his  every  statement.  Less  time  will 
be  wasted  when  this  rule  is  rigorously  fol- 
lowed. What  would  we  think  of  an  investi- 
gator in  chemistry  who  gave  only  results,  made 
no  mention  of  the  processes  by  which  results 
were  reached,  and  carefully  destroyed  all 
traces  of  his  methods  as  soon  rs  his  work  was 
accomplished?  We  should  hardly  credit  him 
with  common  sense.  And  yet  that  is  just  the 
course  that  many  historians  have  pursued  in 
the  past,  and  that  many  are  pursuing  to-day. 
Many  of  the  instructors  in  our  colleges  by 
their  irrational  methods  of  instruction  are  cul- 
tivating that  sort  of  thing  with  their  students. 
and  until  these  teachers  develop  a  scientific 
conscience  this  state  of  things  is  likely  to 
continue. 

The  task  that  1  set  myself  in  the  opening 


124  HISTORICAL    METHOD. 

chapter  has  been  accomplished.  I  then  st-ited 
my  belief  that  there  would  never  be  better 
teaching  of  history  until  there  are  more  stu- 
dents of  history  among  the  teachers.  It  waa 
that  conviction  that  lead  to  this  attempt  to 
present  in  a  brief  outline  the  substance  of  the 
method  of  historical  research  as  found  in  the 
works  of  Bernheim  and  of  Langlois  and  Seig- 
nobos.  If  it  opens  the  eyes  of  any  teacher  to 
the  necessity  of  this  training  and  leads  them 
on  to  study  the  works  that  I  have  so  constantly 
cited,  I  shall  have  done  all  that  I  hoped  to  do. 


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